There are a lot of conversations going on right now about how Trump’s reelection and the failure of the Democrats sounds the death knell for “woke ideology”.
Many commentators make it clear they believe the “general public” want rid of the stuff, but academia will take longer to reform, or will go bust eventually, pursuing a dying ideology.
It’s bullshit, but it’s what people believe.
In my obsession of watching and reading all the right-wing thoughts on “woke ideology”, I have come to the conclusion that what they are fundamentally railing against is theory itself. By theory, I mean cultural theory that has developed since the Cambridge School, Practical Criticism, and New Criticism.
With a background in English Literature and Creative Writing in a university setting, this is where my perception of these theories comes from, but all cultural theories seep into one another in some way.
A (Very Brief) History of English Studies
Don’t switch off just yet! I promise to be quick.
In the 1920s, I.A. Richards pioneered Practical Criticism, a new theory of studying literature that is essentially intense close reading. He advocated for focusing on ‘the words on the page’ and ignoring all contextual information related to said text.
William Empson, a colleague of Richards, pushed this even further, treating the words on the page almost like mathematics.
The final stage of this Practical Criticism can be seen in F.R. Leavis and Q.D Leavis’ journal Scrutiny (founded in 1932), which moved the close reading of Richards and Empson from poetry to novels.
All the literary theories after this rejected the isolated close reading of the text and advocated for some kind of contextual analysis.
(these are not the “true” beginnings of theory, technically, as many writers and thinkers proposed theories about narrative, plot, etc, before this, from Aristotle, to the Romantics, to T.S. Eliot… but this is where the study in universities began).
The Theories We Now Call “Woke”
Structuralism (1950s in France – 1970s in UK and U.S.) was the exact opposite of Practical Criticism. Structuralists believe that nothing can be understood in isolation and instead must be analysed within the structures they are a part of.
I don’t think people like Jordan Peterson would have too much trouble with this cultural theory. It makes sense, and doesn’t seek to tear anything down.
Post-structuralism, however, is when we start to see this apparent “cultural revolution” begin in our academic history.
Post-structuralists believed that structuralism did not go far enough, so this new mode of thinking is not new but instead more fundamental in its beliefs.
At its most fundamental, post-structuralism:
- Is highly sceptical of “truth”, believing, as Nietzche said, “there are no facts, only interpretations.”
- Is deconstructive in its analysis of a narrative, aspect of culture, etc.
- Believes that reality itself is textual, in opposition to structuralism’s dependence upon language as a system for understanding reality.
Post-structuralists believe that the individual does not exist, and is instead a ‘tissue of textualities.’ We are all ‘constructed’.
The Postmodern Devil
Postmodernism and “neo-marxism” (whatever that means) are often blamed for the creation of the “woke ideology” that has “infested our institutions”.
Postmodernism, briefly, came about in the 1980s (ish) and is a continuation of Modernism. Modernism tore down the old structures of the arts and was an earthquake of a cultural revolution in itself, rejecting realism for something more experimental.
Like the relationship between structuralism and post-structuralism, however, postmodernism takes the modernist theory and turns it up to eleven.
Postmodernists railed against metanarratives, focusing instead on mininarratives (Lyotard). This pits postmodernism against the Enlightenment thinkers.
There are some problematic elements of postmodernism to mention, such as Baudrillard’s extreme ‘loss of the real’ which is an interesting idea, but somehow led him to call the Gulf War “a televised virtual reality”. Who knows what other historical events he might have said never happened…
So, you can see the “dangers”, if you like, but that goes for all theories. There are repulsive elements of any theory or belief system, if one becomes fundamentalist enough.
The End of Theory
All these theories seep into one another. Psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, postcolonial criticism, new historicism… they all stem from one or more aspects of post-structuralism/deconstruction/postmodernism.
Now the 90s are long gone, is theory dead?
No. It’s alive and kicking. Nothing absolutely mould-breaking has come to topple any of the 20th Century theories (yet), instead theories like postcolonialism and feminism keep updating themselves, etc.
Why the Right Hates “Woke”
The truth is, all these people railing against “woke ideology”, either have little to no understanding of cultural theory, or they understand it very well and want to revert to a time before it.
It is this latter group who concern me. You know who I mean. They tend to be right-wing, probably religious, or call themselves a cultural christian, and they bang on about the Enlightenment (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – I love the Enlightenment!).
These political and cultural commentators (and that’s all they are) would see us return to the rejection of context. Nothing could be more damaging to our culture, our politics, or the way we think about art and life than the removal of contextual analysis.
Do some more left-wing commentators dive too deep into the fundamentalist cesspool of postmodernism now and again? Yes. All the fucking time. And they also haven’t read the books and have no idea what they are talking about.
I would like to suggest that those who see these commentators and paint an entire theory with the “mind virus” brush, first take the time to educate yourselves on what theory actually is.
Without theory we revert to pre-Victorian times in our understanding and analysis of everything we know.
And if you want to see how absolutely fucking dull pre-theory is, try reading some of William Empson’s textual analysis.
Read Some Books
Beginning theory: An introduction to literary and cultural theory by Peter Barry, or Literary Theory: An Introduction by Terry Eagleton are great places to start for budding theorists.
They both provide extra reading lists for specific theories if you want to dive even deeper.
