Susan Neiman

If you're woke, you're left. If you're left, you're woke. We blur the terms, assuming that if you're one you must be the other. That, Susan Neiman argues, is a dangerous mistake. The intellectual roots and resources of wokeism conflict with ideas that have guided the left for more than 200 years: a commitment to universalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress. The woke may do some good in the short term but without these ideas, Neiman argues, they will continue to undermine their own goals and drift, inexorably and unintentionally, towards the right. In the long run, they risk becoming what they despise. One of the world's leading philosophical voices, Neiman makes this case by tracing the malign influence of two titans of twentieth-century thought, Michel Foucault and Carl Schmitt, whose work undermined ideas of justice and progress and portrayed social life as an eternal struggle of us against them. A generation schooled with these voices in their heads, raised in a broader culture shaped by the ruthless ideas of neoliberalism and evolutionary psychology, has set about changing the world. It's time they thought again.

Left Is Not Woke

Rick Powell

"I’m not the first to point out that diversifying power structures without asking what the power is used for can simply lead to stronger systems of oppression." (Susan Neiman, Left Is Not Woke)

"Being a universalist allows you to find fascination and joy in all the ways that people differ – and still come back, time and again, to the bones that build and bind us." (Susan Neiman, Left Is Not Woke)

"Cries of pain deserve a hearing and a response, but they are no more privileged a source of authority than careful arguments." (Susan Neiman, Left Is Not Woke)

"Enlightenment thinkers never thought reason was unlimited; they just refused to let authorities set the limits on what we can think." (Susan Neiman, Left Is Not Woke)

"Ideals are not measured by how well they fit reality; reality is judged by how well it lives up to ideals." (Susan Neiman, Left Is Not Woke)

"For the distinction between reason and violence undergirds the distinction between democracy and fascism, and any hope of resisting the slide toward fascism depends on remembering the difference." (Susan Neiman, Left Is Not Woke)

"To stand on the left is to stand behind the idea that people can work together to make significant improvements in the real conditions of their own and others’ lives." (Susan Neiman, Left Is Not Woke)

Left Is Not Woke quotes

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