Woke: the rise… and fall?

At this special Battle of Ideas festival European satellite event held in partnership with the Paris Salon. Claire Fox, director of the London-based Academy of Ideas and non-affiliated member of the House of Lords (as Baroness Fox of Buckley), will be in conversation with Jean-Francois Braunstein, professor emeritus of Philosophy at Sorbonne Paris 1 University and author of Woke Religion.

From gender ideology to critical race theory and intersectionality, ‘progressive’ ideas or ‘woke’ thinking has become central to the goal of modernising Western societies. Today, from academia to the arts, politics to corporations, bending the knee to new, identity-led orthodoxies is the new normal.

Despite the language of inclusivity, this approach to political change seems intolerant and illiberal. So why has woke emerged and what can France learn from the British experience of this phenomenon? How have ‘progressive’ ideas come to dominate the intellectual landscape and conquer institutions – and why do they appeal to intellectuals and young people in particular? How and why have legislators created laws that have helped institutionalise such trends?

Some hope that with Trump’s return to the White House we might be seeing a slowdown or even the ‘end of woke’. Others believe we are stuck in a cycle of extremes and mutually reinforcing grievances on all sides. With conformism masquerading as radicalism, can there be any hope of generating genuine social change and political movement? Can we make anew the case for tolerance and freedom in the twenty-first century? Is it too optimistic to declare the end of woke, or are we indeed at the beginning of the end of a poisonous ideology?