Book review of Nadia Geerts' book Woke! The Victim Tyranny (Brussels, Éditions F. Deville, 2024)
In the literature analyzing the woke phenomenon, each work has its own specificity and originality. Let us first note that all those who take the trouble to analyze the language and concepts on which "wokeism" is based arrive at the same conclusions: it is an ideology where contradictions, incantations, approximations, denial and ignorance of the past abound. As soon as we scratch a little in these bombastic statements that are intended to be full of empathy, we can only highlight these inconsistencies. But each work that deals with the subject presents its own characteristics: this literature is not redundant, it integrates the particularities of the complementary points of view, of the angles chosen by each author to highlight such inconsistency or such contradiction, such presupposition, such denigration of the universality that has cemented Western societies, with their qualities and their defects that there is of course no question of denying.
Nadia Geerts' book is original, in that it is partly based on a characteristic of wokeism: victimization, the desire to pass for unfortunate martyrs exposed to the wickedness of others; the "others" are whites, non-Muslims, men, heterosexuals, "cisgenders", able-bodied people, even Jews, and this as new oppressions are invented. Each subdivision of humanity thus finds a reason to complain: blacks, Muslims, women, LGBT, transgender, the disabled, non-Jews, this without end. And each one claims his traumas, the attacks, the stresses of which he feels victim. Everything is in the feeling, in the emotion, in the sentiment, to make people cry in the cottages. The one who accumulates wins the contest of the most miserable: the homosexual black woman ticks three boxes all by herself… Nadia Geerts thus takes us into the study of victim tyranny, but not only. And let's not forget that she is the only one not to enter this game: object of a campaign of denigration and threats, fearing for her safety, she decided to leave teaching, but she chose not to talk about it in her book…
She first clarifies this notion of wokeness in a didactic way, explaining what it is and what it is not: "In short, what are we talking about?" She then draws up a historical picture of the use of the word and the concept, specifying that it is not a structured movement. Of course, according to the "progressive" proponents of this movement, wokeism does not exist, and it is only "white men over 50" who feel "overwhelmed by societal advances" who invented it, in short... Nadia Geerts explains very well this divide between universalism and differentialism, which means that the defense of minorities, which is a moral imperative of prime importance, is done "not as 'first equals', but as 'first different'" (pp. 36-37), which results in "drawing a line of equality between 'minorities' and 'discriminated'" and denying universalism, which has structured Western thought since Antiquity, and to which all peoples who put reason before emotion have adhered, on the grounds that it has not abolished discrimination...
More than a history in the strict sense, this first part of Nadia Geerts' book analyzes the philosophical substratum from which woke thought emerged, which is based on deconstructionist pedantry, according to Pierre-André Taguieff, the book's preface writer (p. 45). With deconstruction, she tells us, there is no longer any subject, no facts, no truth: only perspectives, points of view, subjectivities remain. Deconstruction has given rise to the emergence of critical studies : there are no longer scientific disciplines, history, sociology, anthropology or others, but subjects: gender, race, obesity, disability, homosexuality, etc. Nadia Geerts emphasizes that such "studies" do not aim to study any cultural or intellectual production, but to list everything that may be related to discrimination. The strictly scientific aspects are totally absent from these studies. In the reverse case of white sudies, it is the census of the advantages conferred by the fact, not of being white, but of being perceived like white.
After this historical and philosophical analysis conducted with many examples and quotes that make it valuable for the reader who wants to understand how Western, American and European intellectuals got themselves into this mess, Nadia Geerts addresses a certain number of recurring themes that constitute the heart of the woke nebula.
- Language is addressed first, with a presentation of the excesses of inclusive writing, officially adopted in French-speaking Belgium on 1er January 2022 “for all official writings emanating from authorities recognized or subsidized by the French Community”[1]. She gives us a distressing inventory of the neologisms that abound in woke language: words ending in -phobe, which well translate this victim madness, words ending in -ism which seem to theorize ideas; and she offers us an amusing inventory of the words that remain to be created to thwart them, including atheophobia, islamophobia, islamistonormativity ou policeicide are the most delicious. Finally, Nadia Geerts discusses the rewriting of old works that could discriminate against one community or another, and the hiring by publishers of readers, attitudes which demonstrate a real contempt for literature.
- "Race" is the second theme addressed, and the author reminds us how contradictions reign in this area: we know very well that races do not exist in the human species, but the wokes do not seem to know it and always use the word to create, for example, the term "racialized" or "critical race theory"[2]Nadia Geerts denounces the incongruous overlapping of the situation in the United States with the European situation, which has neither the same past nor, a fortiori, the same present.
- Sex, or gender, as it is now called, takes up nearly 30 pages (111 to 140); the problems of this neo-feminism which, contradictorily, wants to both defend women and essentialize them, are analyzed at length. Wokism has objectively found itself the ally of the profound sexism of religious fundamentalists, disguised as a cult of complementarity, giving pride of place to the wearing of the veil, to non-mixed meetings, to the interested intrusion of certain men who have become women in places traditionally reserved for women for obvious reasons, such as toilets or prisons. Gender denying sex, all plant, animal (and therefore human) biology is thus called into question, and we arrive at a strange laxity where everyone can choose their sex, from childhood to adulthood, according to their "feelings". And, by a semantic inversion, the abstention from any early hormonal or surgical mutilation in children and adolescents is renamed “conversion therapy”.
- Finally, ecology also conveys the contradictions inherent in woke ideology. Various injunctions of wokeism would like to place anti-speciesism and animalism among the great causes to defend. The fight against global warming is a just and necessary cause, and there is no need to be woke to contribute to it, but the essentialization of entities such as "nature", "rivers" or "forests" is part of a desire for deconstruction "certainly very trendy, but fundamentally irrational" (pp. 144-146).
The third part of Nadia Geerts' book, entitled "Critical Approach", is devoted to this culture of victimization whose contradictory counterpart is the culture of cancellation or erasure, the cancel culture. Everything is a pretext to demand the cancellation of a conference, a theatrical performance, an exhibition, with the denunciation of these bad guys who do not share my opinion, who do not share my suffering. Making others suffer through these cancellations is not, however, reprehensible... Wanting to replace the terms "man" and "woman" which, in dance, refer to precise and codified roles, with the terms " leader " and " follower " is the archetype of the contradictions that the contortions of the woke lead to, because it is then assumed that women are followers, which, understandably, they do not want! One does not enroll in a university course, says Nadia Geerts, for the sole purpose of being protected from offenses, and "annoyance" must not become an argument in itself.
Subjectivity rules in all the areas the author reviews, and feeling replaces proof: asking where, when, and how white supremacy manifests itself is considered racist and demonstrates unbearable violence (p. 153). To be able to talk about something, you have to have experienced it; to translate a black poet, you have to be black. You don't have the right to speak if you haven't felt racism, sexism, or another "offense"; and there is no longer any possible dialogue: quoting Pierre-Henri Tavoillot, Nadia Geerts concludes that for the wokes, "everything is a fight," while in the realm of reason, "everything is debate." And it is true that the scientific field is not spared by wokeism.
A very interesting point is analyzed by Nadia Geerts: the comparison of the woke ideological system with that of Marxism. But if Marx imagined a dictatorship of the proletariat as an essential prerequisite for a classless society, wokeism orchestrates the dictatorship of minorities, this legitimate revenge that can give rise to a peaceful society (p. 168). She also recalls that wokeism is not a popular movement in search of social justice: it is a movement of the privileged! People from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, White or Black, are not worthy of the attention of the wokes and have never benefited from the flashy staging that all the "oppressed" benefit from.
The "forgotten" of wokeism are numerous: Nadia Geerts quickly lists them at the end of her book: first of all, the Jews, whom the wokes often consider as "more than white", anti-Semitism never being a fight worthy of their indignation. But also Muslim gays, without forgetting that the only countries in which homosexuality is penalized and sometimes punished by death are Muslim countries; Black women, in these same countries or when they return, circumcised or subjected to forced marriages from childhood, or even victims of "honor crimes"; and in the West, Black women raped by Black men, who are shamed if they file a complaint because it "harms the cause".
What I liked about Nadia Geerts' book is first of all the apparently detached tone that the author takes to describe attitudes or remarks that make one jump with surprise mixed with disbelief: "How can one support such absurdities?" I often asked myself when discovering many facts that I did not yet know. Also noteworthy is the use of quotes from authors who preceded her in denouncing these excesses: Nadia Geerts never steals the show, but she restores the ideas and formulations of each author in their context. Finally, I appreciated the structuring of the book into numerous sub-chapters, each dedicated to a specific problem: this allows the reader to find this or that passage, this or that example that he or she wants to explore further. And it is in this, among many other qualities, that this book is useful for anyone interested in the woke phenomenon.
* The great historian of the IVe Republic that is Georgette Elgey will not hold it against me for borrowing the title of one of her works for this review.
