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Stânga vs WOKE — Transcript

by Cătălin Moise · 14,233 words · 2,431 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00Hi! It was in 2019, so seven years ago,
0:03I made a video called "are you allowed
0:05to say the n-word."
0:08It no longer exists on the internet
0:10because at the time I made it, I wasn't
0:12very sound of mind, aesthetically
0:14speaking. I was screaming in the video
0:17and generally didn't look good at all.
0:18The argument I was trying to communicate
0:21, however, much to my surprise, has
0:22remained pretty much the same in my head
0:25. It hasn't undergone any major changes
0:27in all this time. I didn't have the
0:29ability back then to contextualize it
0:32very well, but now I do, so it seemed
0:34worth revisiting the general theme in
0:36more nuanced ways to see where, how, and
0:38why I was wrong or right.
0:41The argument wasn't then, and isn't now
0:43, about the Roma, but about some
0:44different ways of approaching a very
0:46complicated issue.
0:49At this moment, where the wave of
0:51fascism is no longer an amorphous thing
0:53on the horizon, but is already wetting
0:55our knees, I thought I could start from
0:57what I said then to investigate how we
0:59ended up in this situation where the
1:01notion of leftism is once again so
1:03compromised that it scares off the very
1:05people it should be helping.
1:07So as not to keep you in suspense any
1:09longer, what I was saying there was
1:11something quite simple.
1:13Let's say your stated goal is to reduce
1:15the level of discrimination in society,
1:18and for that, you try to make as many
1:20people as possible realize that certain
1:22words have an extremely toxic historical
1:24weight and simply perpetuate miserable
1:27relations with other human beings.
1:31Except those people are busy, they were
1:33tired, returning from work, and what you
1:35say about words doesn't land with the
1:37importance you wanted, the kind you feel
1:39deep down.
1:41Some even mock you, which is annoying
1:43because, after all, you do have a point
1:45. These words are vile.
1:47Why don't people listen? The more you
1:50are mocked, the more your annoyance
1:51grows proportionally, and your patience
1:54wanes. You are human too, and your tone
1:56starts to change. To realize the
1:58magnitude of the toxicity of these words
2:00and what profound ramifications and
2:02effects they actually have, you probably
2:04have some higher education. You
2:06understand the situation too well, and
2:08all these people who don't listen start
2:10to seem a bit stupid. Why don't these
2:12fools listen?
2:13Do they really not understand this very
2:15simple matter?
2:17We have a clear way to improve this
2:19society.
2:20Just stop saying the damn word because
2:22it's not okay, and we can't even manage
2:24to do that much.
2:25What chance do we have of doing more
2:27complicated things if we can't even
2:29agree on this simplest of matters?
2:32As these questions run through your mind
2:34, on the other side, the people you are
2:36supposedly in dialogue with feel your
2:38tension. I see you frowning. For some,
2:40this issue wasn't even on their radar
2:42until yesterday, and today people are
2:44already yelling at them. They are told
2:46they are stupid. So, they react humanly
2:48. Who are these people who show up to
2:50yell at me that I’m stupid when I was
2:52just minding my own business? Why do
2:54they insist I am such a vile person if I
2:56don't instantly conform to whatever
2:58they're saying? Should I conform?
3:00Strangers come up to me and tell me I'm
3:02stupid for not behaving the way they
3:04want, and I should just conform like
3:06that? But what am I here? And at this
3:08point, the expected solidarity tends to
3:11collapse, while the underlying issue may
3:13remain completely untouched.
3:15What I was saying seven years ago is
3:17that I don't see how this type of
3:19exasperated discourse can land in
3:21communities of people living in varied
3:23material and educational conditions and
3:25produce anything other than annoyance.
3:29This is not exactly a sophisticated
3:31observation, and yet the effect of this
3:33dynamic has proven to be so great that
3:35this insistence on words has come to
3:37symbolically summarize much of what is
3:40understood by leftism.
3:42How did this happen? If a well-meaning
3:45moderate leftism claims that the
3:47conservative capitalist system—the enemy
3:49, therefore—has demonized all these
3:51efforts and caricatured them in the
3:54media to hinder progress, as the enemy
3:56usually does.
3:58That is also certainly true, and if we
4:00accept only that as an explanation, then
4:02we can rest easy and not analyze any of
4:04these things, because essentially the
4:07intentions were good, the core of the
4:09discourse was good, it was just thwarted
4:11by the enemy enough to alienate people.
4:15I will argue in what follows that things
4:17are not quite like that and that there
4:19was indeed an inherent problem in this
4:21way of thinking even before it was
4:23caricatured and hijacked by the
4:24capitalist machine.
4:27Furthermore, that this way of thinking,
4:30taken to its final logic, can become
4:32something approximately anti-leftist,
4:34which is why here I am now wading into
4:36this vaguely terrifying argumentative
4:39swamp.
4:40The title under which we find ourselves
4:42is "Left versus Woke," so now we are
4:44left with the impossible task of
4:46satisfactorily defining what "woke"
4:48means.
4:50With "left," let's say we manage, but "
4:52woke," at this point, surely has some
4:54sort of meaning for each of us.
4:57I say this with such certainty because I
4:59conducted a sociological study where I
5:02asked my mother if she knew what "woke"
5:04meant, and she said yes, and that it’s
5:06not good. Since she isn't exactly
5:08someone who spends all day on the
5:10internet, I concluded from my research
5:12that the term has reached deep enough
5:14into all sorts of social strata to be
5:16worth addressing by making this video.
5:20The term "woke," which is used
5:22predominantly as an insult today,
5:24emerged in African-American culture
5:26somewhere around the 1930s, when
5:28community members were urged to wake up
5:30to the magnitude of the injustice and
5:32discrimination around them—and it was
5:34significant, because in the 1930s,
5:36African-Americans were still frequently
5:39lynched for trivial reasons by mobs of
5:41angry white racists.
5:44Up until the late 2000s, the term "woke
5:46" was therefore used mainly within
5:48African-American culture with this sense
5:51of vigilance in the face of the violence
5:53of surrounding racism.
5:55Only after 2010 did the word begin to be
5:57intensely popularized online, becoming a
6:00kind of umbrella term for progressive
6:02activism primarily focused on
6:04anti-racism, feminism, gender identities
6:07, language issues, representation,
6:09privilege, and intersectionality, which
6:12ties them all together. The notion of
6:14economic class, usually represented
6:16quite modestly throughout all these
6:18things, was pushed into the background,
6:20with the focus mainly on types of
6:22discrimination suffered by people based
6:24on individual identity, especially
6:26racial, gender, or sexual orientation.
6:29From this identity-based preoccupation,
6:31an intense attention to the type of
6:33language used develops. It is discovered
6:36that many words, even beyond the obvious
6:38ones, perpetuate imbalanced power
6:40structures that facilitate
6:42discrimination even where no one
6:43expected it.
6:45From this is born the concept of verbal
6:47microaggressions that discriminate
6:49invisibly. You think you are saying one
6:51thing, when you were actually saying
6:53something else. You wouldn't even
6:54realize you’re sleeping like a fool on
6:56the oppressive sociocultural currents
6:58flowing beneath your pillow. Can’t you
6:59see where you’re sleeping? Somewhere
7:01around this period, toward the beginning
7:04of the 2020s, the term "woke" began to
7:06be used increasingly pejoratively, as an
7:08insult, a ridicule of these excessive
7:11concerns regarding the mentioned topics
7:13. So, if we have to define what "woke"
7:16means, our best chance is to associate
7:18it with this package of ideas that makes
7:20individual identities the core of the
7:23issue.
7:24For this reason, in academia, when
7:26necessary, the term "identity politics"
7:28is used instead, because it’s hard to
7:31sound serious talking about "woke,"
7:33since it’s such a burnt-out word. When
7:36you look closely at this "identity
7:38politics," you discover that there is,
7:40in fact, an intellectual history to
7:42these concepts that you can actually
7:44trace. It’s not really a phenomenon
7:46invented just overnight in internet
7:48memes.
7:49The specific way these concepts were
7:51packaged and united under this form of
7:53identity politics from the 80s to the
7:55present is something new, however, and
7:58very specific to the curious present we
8:00find ourselves in.
8:02The main problem we are meant to address
8:04is that this package is what is
8:06understood today by leftism.
8:07And if you have been paying attention to
8:09the words used so far, perhaps you could
8:12already glimpse where the problem in the
8:14title appears, from where the tension
8:15arises.
8:17Classic leftism has as its main
8:19characteristic a certain universalism
8:21that proclaims that all people must
8:24benefit from certain rights and
8:25dignities, regardless of individual
8:28characteristics, because fundamentally
8:30the essence of each person is that of a
8:32human being, a member of humanity, not a
8:35member of group X intersected with Y
8:37intersected with Z. Applied to our
8:39violent reality, however, this
8:41distinction can sound like idealistic
8:43philosophical presumption, just empty
8:45words.
8:47In response to the massive protests that
8:49happened in 2020 in America under the
8:52slogan Black Lives Matter, racist
8:54conservatives started making mocking
8:56protests with the slogan All Lives
8:58Matter. Are they, therefore, the
8:59universalist leftists we were looking
9:01for? Uh, no, they are not. The situation
9:05is truly complicated because proponents
9:07of identity politics argue in convincing
9:10ways that you cannot start being a
9:12universalist when some groups start from
9:14much further behind than others, that
9:16you must first focus on the most
9:18marginalized and discriminated groups
9:20before you have any chance, and they are
9:23identifiable by criteria of race, gender
9:25, and sexual orientation.
9:28You have to take each one individually
9:30and analyze how they were particularly
9:32disadvantaged and distribute
9:33compensatory individual rights
9:35accordingly.
9:37It is basically that meme with the
9:39difference between equality and equity,
9:41only at some point someone realized, but
9:43why are these people still standing
9:45there looking awkwardly over the fence?
9:47They have no money. And the notion of
9:49justice was also added to the meme as
9:51the real desirable endpoint.
9:54In the terms of this meme, what we are
9:56discussing here is the danger of
9:58conceptual blocking in the middle phase
10:00, where final success remains the
10:01ability to offer people adapted crutches
10:04so they can watch the game over the
10:06fence while they argue about who has the
10:08bigger crutch and why.
10:10And on top of the racism issue, along
10:13the way other unexpected adverse effects
10:15appear that lead us toward some truly
10:17dubious territories.
10:19I invite you, therefore, to go through
10:21part of the intellectual thread that has
10:23come to compose this problematic tangle
10:25. Let us start chronologically, right
10:28from the seed of the extreme seriousness
10:30surrounding words. It was planted
10:32indirectly by a rather eccentric French
10:34philosopher by the name of Michel
10:36Foucault. Although perhaps not super
10:38famous in non-academic circles, Foucault
10:41has had an absolutely huge influence in
10:43the academic environment. He is one of
10:45the most cited and studied philosophers
10:47since World War II.
10:50Foucault is also a rather annoying and
10:53quite complicated philosopher if you
10:55really want to process the depths of
10:57what he was trying to explain, which is
10:59also why he became this great seed, as
11:01there are many things to bloom from his
11:03complicated opinions.
11:06To give him some coordinates, for you to
11:09realize where he is coming from,
11:11remember how Nietzsche in the 1880s
11:13wrote all those dizzying things about
11:15the death of God and the impossibility
11:17of any objective truth and how our
11:19values are things invented within
11:21certain power dynamics, and then he
11:23would sit and complain, "Oh my, I
11:24appeared too early, nobody understands
11:27what I am saying, I am writing for
11:29people who haven't even been born yet."
11:32What am I to do?
11:33Well, Foucault is Nietzsche's revenge.
11:36He is the very unborn baby for whom
11:38Nietzsche was writing.
11:40Foucault is the most potent vehicle
11:42through which Nietzsche's fundamental
11:44philosophical conceptions gain a very
11:46real consequence in our contemporary
11:48universities, one large enough to
11:50enormously alter the entire humanistic
11:53academic environment.
11:55Foucault himself proudly admitted that
11:57Nietzsche was his true father. I have
11:59made videos about Nietzsche on this
12:01channel precisely because his relevance
12:03for the current moment seemed endless to
12:06me, but in fact, specifically, Foucault
12:08is the one who filters it and injects it
12:10deep into the university environment.
12:13And now, let's see what the hell this
12:15means.
12:16This part will be the most difficult to
12:18process, as there are very complicated
12:20things to say very briefly, but in the
12:22rest of the clip we will keep circling
12:25around Foucault's ideas, so maybe they
12:27will become clearer along the way, if
12:29not immediately.
12:31So, first of all, Foucault was part of
12:34those many French intellectuals who,
12:36after 1945, were convinced communists,
12:38big fans of the Soviet Union in its
12:41capacity as the main bulwark of the
12:43global proletariat.
12:46Only once the emotion of the end of
12:48World War II fades, it becomes quite
12:50clear to some that Stalin is not exactly
12:52the star of the international working
12:54class, but a kind of atrocious,
12:56country-devouring dictator.
12:59Foucault, after teaching for some time
13:01in Poland in 1958, becomes completely
13:03disillusioned with what this communism
13:05looks like in practice and begins to
13:08develop some very unique opinions
13:10regarding this whole thing with leftism
13:12.
13:13First of all, that Marxist story which
13:15said that capitalism would inevitably
13:17hit some serious contradictions that
13:20would unite the working class in a
13:22revolution that would emancipate
13:23humanity from oppressive power
13:25structures, Foucault says, I don't
13:27believe it.
13:28Then he also says, but why should it be
13:30like that? And because he is upset, he
13:33continues, and who are you and how would
13:35you know? All of them being very serious
13:38questions.
13:39Somewhere around here, a very intense
13:41skepticism is born regarding these grand
13:43narratives about human evolution, and
13:45especially that this evolution is headed
13:48toward some kind of progress. Such as,
13:50for example, what if we aren't actually
13:53making progress, but something else,
13:55more complicated, that requires more
13:57words.
13:59Beyond this general skepticism toward
14:01the notion of progress, the main theme
14:04of Foucault's philosophy, what interests
14:06us the most and what he kept exploring
14:08in one way or another, was the
14:10relationship between forms of power and
14:12forms of knowledge—that is, how power
14:15can create truths, or more precisely,
14:17how certain power dynamics in society
14:19dictate certain notions that are then
14:21taken as truths or seemingly natural
14:24categories, which appear God-given, not
14:26invented.
14:28Here, the inheritance from Nietzsche
14:30should be quite clear, only Foucault
14:32really breaks the situation down and
14:35tries to discuss this dynamic between
14:37power and the production of categories
14:39as applied as possible. He wrote three
14:41very major books. The first in 1961,
14:43called*History of Madness in the
14:45Classical Age*, or*Madness and
14:47Civilization*by its better-known name,
14:50in which he analyzed the historical way
14:52the line between madness and normality
14:55was drawn, who labels whom as mad and
14:57why.
14:59Foucault's second major book was*
15:01Discipline and Punish*, in which he
15:03analyzes how our advanced societies have
15:05perfected disciplinary techniques that,
15:08although they might seem milder, are
15:10actually much more total and harder to
15:12avoid.
15:15And here Foucault attacks the notion of
15:17progress, because it might have been
15:18awful when, in the past, criminals were
15:20tied to horses running in opposite
15:22directions while the public applauded,
15:24but at least after that you went home
15:26and went about your business somewhat,
15:28unless you happened to be the person
15:30being dismembered.
15:33In our modern societies, however, these
15:35spectacles of torture meant to
15:36demonstrate the power of the state over
15:39your body have been replaced by
15:40all-present forms of discipline meant to
15:42make you fit in at every step with what
15:45is called normality.
15:49No one needs to break your body anymore
15:51because, at every step, you pass through
15:53institutions that dictate your
15:55permissible movements through space, as
15:57school and work have practically become
15:59similar to prison through their power to
16:01shape your behavior and discipline you.
16:06To illustrate this situation, Foucault
16:08also discusses the very famous example
16:10of a prison with a tower in the middle
16:12that looks into all the prisoners '
16:14cells, but the prisoners cannot see who
16:16or what is in the tower, the so-called
16:18panopticon prison, where, because you
16:21have no way of knowing if someone is
16:23watching you, you end up behaving as if
16:25you are always being watched anyway, as
16:27if someone is always looking at you.
16:31This metaphor then extends to the whole
16:33of society, one in which you take on the
16:36task of your own discipline, you
16:38self-monitor, you constantly compare
16:40yourself to the norm and adjust
16:42accordingly, even before being scolded
16:44by anyone.
16:46This is one of the new and revolutionary
16:49ways in which Foucault defines the
16:51notion of power, not just as something
16:53imposed from the top of a pyramid, but
16:55as norms internalized and constantly
16:57reproduced in society, in the various
16:59relationships between people and more or
17:02less institutional structures.
17:05I watch myself while watching you, who
17:07watch yourself while watching me conform
17:10.
17:11Power defined as a kind of viscous
17:13liquid through which we all slide.
17:16And indeed, his idea of a societal
17:19panopticon that forces a certain
17:21self-surveillance, while already very
17:23potent in the 70s, has only become
17:25increasingly relevant as time passed,
17:27right up to our present times sculpted
17:30by social media.
17:32His third major book was called The
17:34History of Sexuality, in which he
17:35investigates all the kinds of powers
17:38that have shaped how and why the notions
17:40by which we define our own sexualities
17:42came to be. Who invented the category of
17:44the homosexual as a typology of person,
17:47for example? Someone else, certainly not
17:49you. In distant times, a man who had sex
17:52with another man could be considered a
17:54sinner, scandalous, indulging in carnal
17:57pleasures, but he was not identified as
17:59this different species of human called a
18:01homosexual.
18:03Foucault investigates how this category
18:05was invented in the year 1870 and how it
18:08became defined as a psychiatric problem
18:10.
18:11For us here, however, in our own
18:13questions, what remains highly relevant
18:15is the notion that in our modern society
18:18power is exercised even through
18:20seemingly minor categorizations, that
18:22there is a great deal of power just in
18:24labeling and defining, and that the ways
18:26in which these labels are produced and
18:28used perpetuate certain types of power.
18:32And to put it briefly, there are no
18:35neutral, disinterested, objective labels
18:37or categories ordained by God. Wherever
18:40there is labeling, an exercise of power
18:42is taking place, and any such
18:44categorizations must be investigated
18:46with the utmost suspicion. Again, it's
18:49quite hard to simply summarize what
18:50Foucault kept saying because he really
18:52says some counterintuitive things that
18:54require broader explanations for you to
18:56grasp what he actually wants from you.
19:00But as a general idea, just as Nietzsche
19:02questioned not what exactly is good and
19:04what exactly is evil, but how we came to
19:07define these things historically, why,
19:09and what that says about us, so does
19:11Foucault with almost everything he
19:13examines.
19:15Not who is insane or not, not who is
19:17homosexual or not, but how these
19:19categories appeared, how they were
19:21defined and why, from what positions of
19:23power, and what that says about us.
19:27Good, let's say we have defined this
19:29first brick, and I think it will
19:31immediately become a bit clearer what it
19:34can do for us, because the next one is
19:36offered to us by another very, very
19:38influential academic named Edward Said,
19:41who wrote a very famous book in 1978
19:43called Orientalism.
19:45Edward Said was a gentleman born in
19:48Palestine in 1935.
19:50Around the age of 15, his parents sent
19:52him as far away as possible from that
19:55area of the world which had become
19:57lethally hostile to Palestinians, and so
19:59Said arrived in America, where he
20:01managed to study at the best
20:02universities of the Western world.
20:05After about 20 years of such Western
20:07education, Said begins to feel more and
20:09more strongly that something is wrong,
20:12after all.
20:13These canonical university texts that he
20:15himself was teaching most often offered
20:17a caricatured perspective on the Arab
20:19world where he had been born.
20:22Upset also by the various forms of
20:24personal discrimination he kept
20:26suffering as an Arab, at the beginning
20:28of the 1970s, Said begins to create
20:31intense ties with Palestinian
20:32politicians.
20:34He decides that this is the moment to
20:36take a more serious look at the places
20:38he left behind.
20:40He takes a break from the Western canon
20:42and begins to read heavily in Arab
20:44history and literature to hear how the
20:46real voices of these so-caricatured
20:48places sound.
20:50Since it was the 1970s and Foucault's
20:52ideas were among the hottest things in
20:54the academic world, Said adopts his
20:56notions about the inherent power of
20:58categorization directly.
21:01The power lies with the one who
21:02describes, and the one being described
21:04is distorted according to the interests
21:06of the writer.
21:07This whole idea should sound quite
21:09familiar to you if you have seen the
21:11clip about colonialism. The book
21:13Orientalism is considered the foundation
21:15of modern postcolonial studies because
21:17Said shows step by step how the Orient
21:19becomes a category produced by the West
21:22to allow it to also dominate culturally
21:24the places it already controlled
21:26militarily and economically.
21:28In this way, the way the Orient comes to
21:30perceive itself is always only in
21:32relation to the West, always in relation
21:35to another culture that keeps telling
21:37you that you are foolish.
21:39Just think about the term Middle East.
21:42Middle in relation to what?
21:44It was invented by the British to refer
21:47to the lands colonized by them,
21:49specifically between those very far away
21:51, in India, in the Far East, and home.
21:55Between the two was this Middle East,
21:57full of Arabs caught in the middle.
22:00So we are not just talking about some
22:03stereotypes, but a structure of science
22:05and knowledge that claims to be purely
22:07descriptive, objective, and neutral when
22:10representing other cultures as
22:12irrational, exotic, barbaric, or simply
22:14inferior.
22:15As if that is what they are. In the
22:17video about colonialism, I discussed
22:19more about the scientific structure
22:21invented to dehumanize African people,
22:24but the mechanism is about the same.
22:26Said is the one who does such an
22:28extensive and convincing analysis of the
22:30role cultural discourse plays in these
22:32subjugations.
22:34An important question that arises from
22:37this whole situation is: who has the
22:38right to represent whose experience?
22:41Since Arabs are apparently too
22:43uncivilized to describe their own
22:44experiences in a worthy way, we are
22:46better off following what a 50-year-old
22:49man from London says about what it's
22:50like to be Arab in Arab culture. How is
22:53that? Is it good? Is it bad?
22:56Because this type of discourse analysis
22:58proved to be so fruitful and interesting
23:01, it was then taken up in multiple
23:03academic fields eager to also discover
23:05hidden injustices in all sorts of other
23:07cultural discourses beyond colonialism.
23:11Although Said explicitly borrowed the
23:13philosophical technology invented by
23:15Foucault to build his arguments, from a
23:18certain point on, their intellectual
23:20paths diverged for the reason mentioned
23:22earlier, namely that Foucault was
23:24annoying and, in a way, disappointing.
23:27The disappointment came from the fact
23:29that Foucault was nonetheless one of the
23:32main representatives of that
23:33philosophical current which dominated
23:36the 1970s and 1980s, later called
23:38postmodernism, although it is a very
23:40general term.
23:42But let's say a major target of this
23:44movement was the problem of producing
23:46so-called objective truths, that
23:48mega-Nietzschean issue that waited 100
23:50years to explode properly.
23:53Relativism is finally exploding, and
23:55it’s exploding big time. Since such
23:58objective, universal truths cannot exist
24:00, it means that all dominant stories in
24:03society become suspect and must be
24:05deconstructed, exposed, and verified;
24:07and furthermore, not only the stories,
24:10but all our statements should actually
24:12be analyzed, because, as they say, there
24:15are no facts, only interpretations, and
24:17in this situation, who interprets what,
24:20as what, and with what effect?
24:23By pursuing these issues with intensity
24:25, this philosophical endeavor often ends
24:27up burying its head so deep into its own
24:29textual backside that it bids farewell
24:32to any contact with reality, becoming a
24:34parallel universe of deconstructing
24:36words until everything becomes quite
24:38nonsensical, though perhaps
24:40aesthetically beautiful like a form of
24:42poetry.
24:44To give you an idea of the level it
24:46reaches, I offer this longer quote from
24:48an important post-structuralist work.
24:51Desiring-machines are binary machines
24:53that function according to a binary rule
24:56or an associative regime. It is always a
24:58matter of a machine coupled to another
25:00machine.
25:03Productive synthesis, the production of
25:05production, has a connective form, and
25:07this is because there is always a
25:09machine producing a flow and another
25:11machine connected to it that operates an
25:13interruption, a withdrawal of the flow—
25:15the breast, the mouth.
25:19And since the first is in turn connected
25:21to another machine toward which it acts
25:23as an interruption or withdrawal, the
25:25binary series is linear in all
25:27directions.
25:28Desire never ceases to couple continuous
25:31flows with partial objects that are
25:33essentially fragmentary and fragmented.
25:36Desire determines flow, it flows and
25:38interrupts.
25:40Reached at such an abstract level, such
25:42language loses any potential political
25:44utility, something Edward Said
25:46considered a major problem.
25:49The accusation here was that this
25:51philosophy spirals into the question of
25:53how it is that it is, meaning how—a
25:56paralyzing level of analysis that leaves
25:58no room for any kind of action, because
26:01before you get to action, well, hold
26:03your horses, man.
26:04Whereas Said takes a piece of this
26:06postmodern interrogative technology and
26:08applies it directly in the form of "
26:10look at how they do it,""look at how
26:12they construct abject descriptions with
26:15concrete political effects that
26:16perpetuate a very real dynamic of
26:18oppression and subjugation."
26:21What if we were to intervene directly in
26:23this dynamic? What if we started
26:25listening to what Arabs say about being
26:27Arab, Africans about being African, and
26:29so on?
26:31If there is so much power in describing
26:33reality, then perhaps a very concrete
26:35way of empowering the oppressed is to
26:37give them the opportunity to be the ones
26:39who describe, to become the describers
26:41themselves.
26:43And then, in time, if you change the
26:45story, if you change the text, you
26:47change the reality.
26:49Doesn't that sound interesting? Doesn't
26:51that sound tempting?
26:52If Foucault showed how you can uncover
26:55the genealogy of certain labels and
26:57categorizations, Said then shows how you
26:59can instrumentalize these findings for
27:01political purposes, namely to change
27:03things, and the combination of these two
27:06techniques became an extremely popular
27:08tool in humanities academia starting in
27:10the 1980s.
27:12If it's still not very clear what is
27:14happening in this whole story, my hope
27:16is that as we keep laying the bricks, it
27:19will become increasingly evident how
27:20they combine into that structure called
27:23identity politics, which gives us
27:24headaches today.
27:26And before we lay brick number three
27:28here, a small, important intermediate
27:30layer must be mentioned. In this drive
27:33to dismantle potentially oppressive
27:35categories, targets also become
27:37categories that might seem mundane, such
27:40as "woman" or "Indian."
27:42In fact, such categories that determine
27:44certain imposed identities are among the
27:47first on the list of suspects because,
27:49after all, who defined what "woman"
27:51means, for what purpose, and in what
27:54power relationship?
27:56Until we resolve this question, isn't it
27:58rather problematic to simply identify
28:00yourself with the concept of woman, to
28:02consider that your human essence is
28:04called "woman"?
28:06And okay, philosophically, yes, all
28:08these things sound very juicy, but what
28:10do you do if in the real world you are a
28:12woman and want to fight for women's
28:14rights, or you are part of an oppressed
28:16category and want to fight for the
28:18rights of your oppressed group?
28:21To this complicated question, a response
28:23that would have a very great influence
28:25was offered by a Marxist feminist
28:27theorist from India named Gayatri Spivak
28:30.
28:33In 1985, she said that essentializations
28:35are indeed wrong because fundamentally
28:38what defines us all is our quality as
28:40human beings, but when necessary, it can
28:42be extremely useful to self-essentialize
28:45as an Indian woman when you need to
28:47fight for the rights of women in India,
28:49for example.
28:53She called this strategic essentialism.
28:56In your free time, you are a human being
28:58with interests and characteristics as
29:00varied as possible, but when it comes
29:02down to it, when you need to unite with
29:04other people in a fight for your own
29:06rights, you become an Indian woman.
29:09From your multiple identities, you
29:10reduce yourself to a single one.
29:13In other words, even if these categories
29:15are problematic in themselves because
29:17they are defined in society by dubious
29:20parameters, when there's trouble on the
29:22streets, you leave theoretical purity
29:24behind and identify as the thing that
29:26allows you to unite with other people
29:28identified just like you. It's not
29:30exactly ideal, but it's necessary,
29:32Spivak said. It is strategically
29:34necessary, because otherwise, how could
29:36you ever move things forward? Even so,
29:39there remains a real tension between the
29:41fight against problematic
29:43categorizations and the need to assume
29:45that categorization temporarily in a
29:47strategic way, just enough to change it
29:50somehow. Basically, to strategically
29:52wear the tight coat that the system
29:54tailored for you, just enough to manage
29:56to tear it. Quite complicated, doesn't
29:58sound easy. It is no wonder, then, that
30:01over time, as we will see, as this idea
30:04was adopted en masse, the important
30:06nuances of Spivak's discourse
30:08disappeared, to her great annoyance—she
30:10is still alive and continues to say
30:12things like, "this is not okay."
30:15Returning now to our bricks, the next
30:17one that must be laid is a very serious
30:19one called Critical Race Theory.
30:22In Romanian, I don't think the term is
30:25much more revealing, but we can refer to
30:27it as "teoria critică a rasei,"
30:29something so dangerous that both in 2020
30:32and 2025, Trump signed executive orders
30:34attempting to ban federal funding for
30:36schools that teach such things.
30:40Critical Race Theory became a huge
30:42boogeyman in the America of 2021, when
30:44all the conservative television stations
30:46sparked a general panic that the
30:48country's schools were teaching children
30:50that all white people are racist.
30:53The panic swelled enough that it became
30:55a major electoral topic.
30:57In 2022, even John Oliver made a clip
31:00about it. The clip is a fairly good
31:02presentation. Now, it shows us how the
31:04scandal was instrumentalized. It shows,
31:07for example, how in 2021, Fox News alone
31:10mentioned Critical Race Theory 4,701
31:13times. When he has to explain what this
31:16concept actually is, John Oliver
31:18performs a little slight-of-hand where
31:20he says, "No, the country's children
31:22aren't learning that," because Critical
31:24Race Theory is actually a complicated
31:26law school-level subject.
31:28He then quickly moves on to show how
31:30conservatives twist these words however
31:33they want to strike fear into people,
31:35which they truly do, in order to
31:36outright reject the harsh history of
31:38American racism.
31:41Except, there are some pretty
31:42fundamental things in Critical Race
31:44Theory that would have been very hard to
31:47say on HBO without sounding super, super
31:49dubious.
31:50So let us now walk the path toward that
31:53potential dubiousness.
31:55Critical Race Theory emerged toward the
31:57end of the 1970s from a deep skepticism
31:59regarding what the movement led by
32:01Martin Luther King did or did not manage
32:04to achieve.
32:05The fantasy in American society was that
32:08the civil rights movement happened, the
32:10acts were signed in 1964, African
32:13Americans got their rights to sit at
32:15tables in restaurants, they vote, boom,
32:18racism is over. They told that story
32:20about the dream with children of all
32:22colors who, in the near future, would
32:24hold hands, and that was it—the gong was
32:26struck for a spell that spread like a
32:28wave across the country's entire
32:29territory and healed it.
32:31And yet, after about 20 years of
32:33fighting in courts for the theoretically
32:35won rights, one African American lawyer
32:38in particular began to express
32:39skepticism regarding these apparent
32:42victories.
32:43This is none other than the founder of
32:46Critical Race Theory, Derrick Bell, who
32:48was also the first African American to
32:50become a tenured professor at Harvard in
32:531971. He creates a legal theory course
32:55showing how racism persists primarily in
32:58a structural way within American society
33:00through institutions that refuse to make
33:02necessary adaptations, or do so
33:04performatively, taking advantage of all
33:06sorts of bureaucratic loopholes.
33:09His main thesis was that attention
33:11should be primarily directed toward this
33:13systemic racism rather than individual
33:15cases of one person swearing at another
33:17on the street.
33:20Fundamentally, his course explained how
33:22ostensibly neutral, seemingly universal
33:24laws that are race-blind actually end up
33:27continuing to discriminate against
33:29people of color through the inertia of
33:31the American society's long history of
33:33racial supremacy.
33:37Derrick Bell's students from this course
33:39then take the things he was saying and
33:41develop them into what would become
33:43Critical Race Theory in the late 1980s.
33:48So when John Oliver says that Critical
33:50Race Theory is something studied at the
33:52law school doctorate level, he is
33:54referring to this aspect of analyzing
33:56the specific framework through which a
33:58seemingly neutral system of laws
34:00continues to create conditions for
34:02systemic discrimination, and to
34:04understand exactly how that happens, you
34:06do indeed enter the territory of legal
34:08theory where you must look at the laws
34:10themselves to see exactly where the
34:12loopholes are, and that is Critical Race
34:14Theory at the fundamental level, at
34:16level one.
34:19Except this first layer comes bundled
34:21with multiple other ideas regarding what
34:23should be done about this situation. The
34:25dream of Martin Luther King and the
34:27civil rights movement was one of
34:29complete integration, of a future in
34:31America where the very notion of race
34:33would no longer exist because, at some
34:35point, we would reach a place where all
34:37people, as the famous quote goes, would
34:39be judged only by the content of their
34:41character and not by the color of their
34:43skin.
34:44Derrick Bell and Critical Race Theory
34:46argue that this will never happen.
34:49In the spirit of Foucault, the narrative
34:51of societal progress is denounced as an
34:53illusion. Racism does not die; racism
34:55transforms, constantly adapts, and finds
34:58other corners—perhaps increasingly
35:01obscure, but no less effective.
35:05In 1992, Derrick Bell wrote a book
35:07explaining how racism in America is not
35:09an anomaly in our democratic landscape,
35:12a remnant of slavery that our nation
35:14wants to heal or is capable of healing,
35:16but rather that racism is a fundamental
35:19, permanent, and indestructible
35:21component of this society.
35:26Bell argues that the progress made in
35:28the rights of people of color occurred
35:30only when it coincided with the
35:31interests of the white majority, not
35:33because of some moral evolution in
35:35society that will eventually lead to a
35:37blissful integration.
35:40Integration also becomes a questionable
35:42goal in this situation because,
35:44theoretically, it could only happen
35:46through a certain submission to the
35:48majority white culture, a submission
35:50that further diminishes the
35:52characteristics of one’s own culture.
35:55As I said, within Critical Race Theory,
35:57divergent opinions then emerge regarding
35:59what exactly should be done in this
36:01situation, but one of them, starting
36:03with Bell himself, is that if the effort
36:06toward integrated schools still produces
36:08poor quality education for African
36:10American children—as they all face
36:12discrimination—then perhaps we should
36:14ease up on integration and focus
36:16strictly on the quality of education,
36:18even if schools remain racially
36:20segregated. In other words, why should
36:22we care that schools are integrated and
36:24look good from the outside if our
36:26children continue to be educationally
36:28disadvantaged? This idea is planted as a
36:31seed for Critical Race Theory, which
36:33begins to conduct such analyses in a
36:35much more pragmatic way, less driven by
36:38that grand ideal of arriving at a
36:40society that has moved past racism. One
36:43of the major influences that Bell had in
36:45the field was precisely this racial
36:47realism, as he called it.
36:49Awakening to the reality of permanent
36:51racism that cannot be defeated; you can
36:53fight against it, and it is good to
36:55fight it, but don't expect any final
36:57victory because it is much too deeply
37:00rooted in the fiber of society. Beyond
37:02this realistic pessimism, a more curious
37:04logical consequence of Critical Race
37:06Theory, formulated by some of its
37:08theorists, is that if neutral laws
37:10perpetuate discrimination, then we need
37:13different laws—ones that recognize the
37:15historical marginalization of minority
37:17groups and their lack of access to
37:19resources. Basically, laws that would
37:22ultimately make the state treat people
37:24differently based on their race.
37:26And here we finally enter territory with
37:29phrases that would be difficult to say
37:31in a humorous tone on HBO, because the
37:33explicit direction in Critical Race
37:35Theory is toward more racial
37:37consciousness.
37:39Not to make efforts to abolish the
37:41concept, but to recognize that these
37:43categories are permanent aspects with
37:45specific histories that dictate certain
37:47consequences which are inevitable.
37:50The dream of total integration fades
37:52here under the realism of systemic
37:54discrimination that cannot disappear
37:56because it has too long a history.
38:00This idea is indeed a very powerful one
38:02, incredibly valid on multiple axes, but
38:04it cannot be completely incontestable
38:07either.
38:08The point this brings us to is a sort of
38:10paradox where, on one hand, everyone
38:12accepts that race is a social construct
38:14, an invention with no biological basis
38:17that has historically only caused harm,
38:19while on the other hand, people must
38:21identify as intensely as possible with
38:23their own race because that is the only
38:25way they become more aware of their own
38:27privileges or historical oppressions.
38:30So what are we to do? What starts as a
38:32legal theory then becomes a cultural
38:34theory, because this mode of analysis
38:36subsequently extends to relationships in
38:38society that do not pertain only to
38:40state institutions.
38:42And we are talking here about authors
38:44who have written things in which they
38:46measured their words as much as they
38:48could to navigate the complicated
38:50nuances of this paradox, but I think it
38:52is quite evident that the way these
38:54ideas can land in the public sphere can
38:56be disastrous, because a brutal way to
38:58simplify this situation is to say that
39:00you basically become a racist if you do
39:02not take someone's race into account.
39:05The world has turned upside down, and
39:07indeed, in codes of conduct at American
39:09universities that are very eager to
39:11conform, guidelines appear that
39:13explicitly state that in an interaction
39:15with another student, it can be a
39:17microaggression if you do not take their
39:19race into account.
39:21There are so many incredibly dizzying
39:23applications of these ideas that I don't
39:25think it would be very fair to focus on
39:27such examples, and yet they are not very
39:29rare.
39:31More on that when we get to the part
39:33about American universities.
39:35Until then, let's try a broader overview
39:37. Critical Race Theory basically
39:40formulates in the first phase a great
39:42skepticism regarding the notion that
39:44racism can be reduced solely through
39:46legal measures. It is basically a
39:47common-sense observation made 15 years
39:50after the signing of a decree for the
39:52civil rights of African Americans did
39:54not eradicate racism from society. This
39:56being the situation, since there is no
39:59center of racism that you can simply
40:01attack and dismantle, the investigation
40:03must be extended to a much wider variety
40:06of power relations in society that keep
40:08reproducing racist dynamics. And here I
40:11hope the scent of Foucault is strongly
40:13felt, the idea being that power is not
40:15something findable only at the top of
40:17the pyramid, but also in a sort of
40:19ping-pong that happens at all levels of
40:21society.
40:22Critical Race Theory thus opens the door
40:25to the analysis of much more subtle
40:27processes that reproduce institutional
40:29and cultural racism in America.
40:32And once this door is opened and you
40:34enter through it with all the
40:35postmodernist philosophical technology
40:37we talked about earlier, you could
40:39basically find racism effectively
40:41everywhere. You look under your shoe and
40:43you find racism. The theoretical
40:45technology allows for it and the context
40:47allows for it because a country built
40:49for hundreds of years on the backs of
40:51the slavery of a certain minority has
40:53the traces of that racism everywhere in
40:56its DNA.
40:57Any behavior that does not take this
40:59history into account and acts neutral
41:01can therefore technically be considered
41:03racist on some quite valid theoretical
41:05grounds.
41:07In short, the basic idea here is that in
41:09a fundamentally racist society, you
41:11cannot be neutral. There is, in fact, no
41:14such thing as a position of neutrality.
41:16If you just ride the boat along
41:17oppressive currents without saying
41:19anything about them and without noticing
41:21them, you are basically racist by
41:23default. There are, therefore, only
41:25racists and anti-racists, people who
41:27actively and intentionally fight
41:29oppressive currents and those who do not
41:31.
41:32An idea that is potentially hard to
41:33assimilate for people who thought they
41:35were just minding their own business. I
41:37said all these things so it would be
41:40quite clear that the excesses and
41:42simplifications of this direction are
41:44easy to ridicule and instrumentalized by
41:46political enemies who mention critical
41:49race theory 4,701 times on Fox News,
41:51even though what they are fighting under
41:53this name is just the general notion
41:55that the effect and presence of racism
41:58in American society should be studied in
42:00some way because, they say, legally the
42:02situation was resolved back in 1964. So
42:05what racism are we talking about?
42:06Everyone is equal under the law, right?
42:09And so the wheel keeps turning. One more
42:11important aspect of critical race theory
42:13needs to be checked off. The term
42:15intersectionality is also invented
42:17within this movement.
42:19It was originally something clear with a
42:21strict definition, namely that there are
42:24situations where people can fall through
42:26legal cracks when they tick two or more
42:28disadvantaged categories.
42:31That, for example, there are some
42:33contexts where the challenges faced by
42:35African American women are not fully
42:37covered by the situation of white women
42:39, nor by the situation of African
42:41American men.
42:43The concept of intersectionality,
42:44therefore, referred to these specific
42:47situations where various categories of
42:49people found themselves at intersections
42:51where they were extra-vulnerable legally
42:53.
42:55But being such a juicy concept, it
42:57quickly finds other homes in gender
42:59studies and feminist theory.
43:02When this happens, we are already in the
43:041990s and over the next 20 years, the
43:07term intersectionality acquires
43:09increasingly relaxed meanings, until it
43:11settles into two in particular.
43:14Another thing that was happening in the
43:17early 1990s was the fall of the Soviet
43:19Union and the beginning of the so-called
43:21end of history, namely the stabilization
43:23of the entire world in this lukewarm
43:25global capitalism that we are enjoying
43:27at this very moment.
43:30Consequently, the tight classical
43:32discussions based on terms like class
43:35and proletariat start to seem more like
43:37relics of a past century, while in
43:39academia the trend toward detecting more
43:41subtle societal injustices became
43:43increasingly thrilling, as we have been
43:46discussing.
43:48The term intersectionality thus evolves
43:51to describe a kind of broader matrix of
43:53privileges and oppressions.
43:56Initially, the theory explained how
43:58people at different intersections
44:00actually have very different life
44:01experiences and therefore very different
44:04perspectives.
44:05A wealthy, heterosexual, white woman
44:07without disabilities will have the
44:09opinions of a wealthy, heterosexual,
44:11white woman without disabilities, while
44:14a poor, lesbian, African-American woman
44:16with disabilities will have her own life
44:19perspectives accordingly. The idea is
44:21then developed in feminist theory, which
44:23explains how your intersectional
44:25position gives you access to certain
44:27truths and not others. If you are a
44:29macho man riding the patriarchy, it is
44:31very easy not to notice the sexism in
44:34society because you have absolutely no
44:36reason to notice it. What are you
44:38supposed to do with the observation
44:39anyway when you have masculine business
44:41to attend to?
44:43Less funny, but perhaps clearer, a
44:45person without disabilities has no need
44:47to notice how easy it is or isn't to get
44:49on a tram if you are in a wheelchair,
44:51whereas the person in that chair
44:53certainly will, and will know exactly
44:56how hard it is, unlike you.
45:00In 1990s feminist theory, this is called
45:03standpoint epistemology, meaning your
45:05social position gives you access to
45:07certain forms of knowledge and certain
45:09specific truths and not others.
45:13Something very interesting and perfectly
45:15valid.
45:16If, however, we take a break and step
45:19back a few paces and combine all these
45:21theoretical things and sprinkle in some
45:232010s internet into the pot, it is very
45:26easy to see how a surefire recipe for
45:28scandal is practically formed.
45:31A philosophy that says your unique
45:33social situation gives you access to a
45:35certain type of knowledge that only you
45:38have, that as you always suspected, only
45:40you possess a certain truth that no one
45:42else understands.
45:45Who could resist such a completely
45:47logically demonstrable fact?
45:50In this way, in certain segments of
45:52internet-based identity leftism,
45:54intersectionality comes to designate a
45:57matrix of unique truths that each
45:58individual carries according to the
46:00group they belong to.
46:04So unique that people from other places
46:06on the intersectional compass lose the
46:08right to speak about each other's
46:10experiences.
46:12The problem becomes: how could you, as a
46:1435-year-old tall white man, have
46:16anything to say about the experience of
46:19a poor, lesbian, African-American woman
46:21with disabilities? And, truth be told,
46:24how could you? Is it something you can
46:26know about it or not?
46:28Depending on how much power we give this
46:30theory, we can easily reach the
46:32conclusion that dialogue between us is
46:34not possible.
46:36Since I never have total access to your
46:38experience and since it may be
46:40intersectionally more complicated than
46:42mine, it means that all I can do is
46:43listen and agree with you that you are
46:45right in everything you say.
46:48I have no way of saying you're wrong, as
46:50that would be epistemologically
46:52incorrect.
46:53We will explore the consequences of
46:55losing the nuances of these ideas more
46:58broadly at the end, but until then, let
47:00us add one last layer to the discussion
47:02that we cannot do without, namely the
47:04theoretical problem of sexuality.
47:08Perhaps the greatest influence in this
47:10field in the 1990s was a person named
47:13Judith Butler, who took postmodern
47:15philosophical technology in its already
47:17mature form and directed it toward sex.
47:20In two triumphant books, it is explained
47:23how not only gender but also biological
47:25sex is a social construct.
47:28That gender is a social construct was
47:30already quite clear in the 90s, but
47:32Judith Butler aims much further and
47:34dismantles the way society labels bodies
47:37as masculine or feminine.
47:39More precisely, that genitals are no
47:42guarantee of anything. Their
47:43significance is also something that
47:45happens at a discursive level in society
47:47.
47:48That the distinction itself between
47:50masculine and feminine is a cultural
47:52product.
47:53The approach is a deeply theoretical one
47:55, carried out in that type of very
47:57complicated post-structuralist language
47:59that I made a little fun of earlier.
48:02What Judith Butler suggests is that no
48:04one is essentially anything.
48:06There is no essence. Sex is something
48:09you perform, not out of your own free
48:11will, but through the repetition of
48:13norms, but you perform it nonetheless,
48:15and what you perform is what you are.
48:18Sex is, therefore, just this involuntary
48:20performance, and there is no deeper
48:23truth behind it, no "actually."
48:27We all construct our sexualities
48:29constrained by forces over which we have
48:31no control, without there being any
48:33essence somewhere back there that we
48:35could ever access.
48:37This idea is both very interesting and
48:39provocative, scandalous and annoying,
48:42and that is how it has been received
48:44since the 90s, sometimes one by one,
48:46other times simultaneously.
48:49What Judith Butler does here is to
48:50deepen to the maximum the difficulty of
48:53the sexual categories that have been
48:54attacked before, which is also why the
48:56first major criticism she encountered
48:58from the feminist community was that
49:00rather large problem already mentioned.
49:04How do you fight for women's rights if
49:06the category of woman becomes a kind of
49:08epistemological error?
49:10Since this is the third time I'm using
49:12this very academic word, it should be
49:14said that epistemologically refers to
49:16the way in which certain truths are
49:18discovered, let's say.
49:20The way one arrives at certain forms of
49:23knowledge—and here, the epistemological
49:25status of biological sex—the way one
49:28arrives at it is placed under a very
49:30large theoretical question mark from
49:32which it has yet to recover.
49:35This issue actually manifests itself
49:37concretely, for example in
49:39intra-feminist conflicts where the
49:41extent to which trans people should be
49:43included in feminism or not is debated.
49:48These would be just a few of the main
49:50seeds that bloom into that more or less
49:52interesting, more or less problematic
49:54tree called identity politics.
49:58Until the advent of the internet, these
50:00discourses remained relatively isolated
50:03in academia and in books read by very
50:05few people, but around the early 2010s,
50:07things started to change.
50:10Young people and students, especially
50:12Americans, who were coming into contact
50:14with these revolutionary and disruptive
50:17ideas found on the internet the space to
50:19propagate the things they had learned,
50:21with the stated goal of improving our
50:23societal existence.
50:25I personally found myself by chance on a
50:28scholarship at such an American
50:30university in 2012, and I saw on the
50:32spot how these ideas were boiling on
50:34campus and how there was extreme
50:36attention in social interactions between
50:39diverse people so as to compensate for
50:41centuries of racial, gender, or sexual
50:43orientation discrimination.
50:48At the time, the level of attention
50:50seemed truly moving and completely
50:52admirable to me, but unfortunately, the
50:54rest of the world turned out not to be a
50:57campus where it costs $ 60,000 a year to
50:59study arts and interesting ideas while
51:01consuming high-quality drugs, so the
51:04vibe turned out not to be perfectly
51:06transplantable.
51:09Books tell me that an important hub for
51:11circulating the identity politics
51:13package on the internet was Tumblr,
51:15beyond the more well-known ones.
51:17I personally was not on Tumblr, but if
51:20you don't know, Tumblr was one of the
51:22big social media platforms in 2013, a
51:24place where you could post whatever you
51:26wanted on your page, as is common, only
51:28what was special about Tumblr was that
51:31the main way of intra-community
51:33interaction was through shares.
51:35You could share or repost on your page
51:37anything you found on the platform.
51:39It wasn't this technological capability
51:42in itself that was special, but rather
51:44the fact that community effervescence
51:46happened through posts that received
51:4880,000 shares and were seen by everyone
51:50. Also specific to the platform was the
51:52adolescent average age of its users, the
51:55vast majority being somewhere between 18
51:57and 25 years old.
52:00In this combination, the concept of
52:02intersectionality and privilege began to
52:04spread intensely, this time as a
52:06template for identifying cultural
52:08offenses.
52:10One of the most popular pages was, for
52:12example,
52:15meaning your favorite is problematic.
52:18A page that took various celebrities and
52:20indexed them against identity laws, such
52:22as Miley Cyrus, who wore a Native
52:24American costume, has a photo where she
52:26pulls her eyes in an Asian manner, and
52:29some tattoos with symbols from cultures
52:31other than her own.
52:33As it happens in revolutionary
52:35communities, especially adolescent ones
52:37, a certain orthodoxy of new knowledge
52:39and acceptable positions was quickly
52:41established. Whoever was the most
52:43radical and revolutionary often seemed
52:45the most studied. Whoever sanctioned
52:48more harshly and specifically seemed the
52:50most knowledgeable.
52:52Whoever lagged behind could be quickly
52:54ostracized for not adapting quickly
52:56enough to the new norms.
52:59As these meme-like versions of the very
53:02complicated ideas mentioned earlier
53:04proved to be extremely juicy, lists
53:06inspired by the content shared on Tumblr
53:08began to appear, such as 18 things white
53:11people don't seem to understand because
53:13of white privilege and six ways to
53:15respond to sexist microaggressions in
53:17daily conversations.
53:21It was back in those distant days of the
53:23internet when lists in general were
53:25something truly fantastic, but
53:27especially lists with conclusions
53:28derived from critical race theory and
53:30third-wave feminism meant to turn your
53:33world upside down.
53:34They quickly outgrew Tumblr and spilled
53:37over onto Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and
53:39other social networks in general,
53:41because they had proven their viral
53:43nature.
53:44They were truly viral, another important
53:47word from the bygone internet.
53:50Cool sites like Salon, Vice, or Vox also
53:53started to pick up on the trend, and
53:55thus many unsuspecting people were
53:57suddenly exposed to abbreviated versions
53:59of thoughts carefully fermented for 40
54:02years in academia.
54:05Surprise epistemology. From here, these
54:08thoughts spread to major newspapers and
54:10then become a vocabulary present in
54:12political debates in that truly real
54:14reality. We won't trace the entire
54:16journey of these ideas in the media
54:18because it is far beyond our goals or
54:20abilities here, but the charm of these
54:22discoveries of privileges and
54:24oppressions is hopefully clear enough,
54:26especially for adolescent minds, but not
54:28only them, as the pleasure of unmasking
54:30the social system we found ourselves
54:32living in involuntarily is something I'd
54:35say is universal, regardless of whether
54:37you end up exposing your genitalia or
54:39who exactly is to blame for 9/11.
54:41And forgive me, I wouldn't want to
54:43equate anyone's genitalia with the twin
54:45towers, but just to highlight pleasures
54:47we all have in common.
54:50Returning now, the students who learned
54:53these things at those expensive American
54:55universities eventually entered society
54:57and began working in corporations, NGOs
55:00, and newsrooms, filled with this
55:02knowledge about the potential, much more
55:04subtle nuances of racism and sexism.
55:08This didn't make them that different
55:10from elite students of previous
55:12generations, but the development of
55:14social media in the 2010s meant two
55:15things that are very relevant to our
55:17discussion.
55:19The first I just mentioned, namely the
55:21online spread in the form of memes of
55:23complicated academic discussions that
55:25lose their nuances along the way.
55:28The second thing, however, is that the
55:30micro and macro aggressions identified
55:32by these students once they entered the
55:35workforce could now be published to the
55:37entire world, could be exposed, which is
55:39exactly what happened in the wave of
55:41public shaming in the early 2010s, with
55:44people discovering the power to hold
55:46their employers, their own NGOs, their
55:48own universities, their own abusers, or
55:50random people saying stupid things
55:52accountable in public.
55:54The accusations brought were often
55:56completely justified and even revealed
55:59abusive practices that existed simply
56:01out of the racist and sexist inertia of
56:03society, the kind that actually exists.
56:06In the past, these problems were
56:08perfectly cover-up-able within these
56:10organizations so that nothing would
56:12change, but not with the proliferation
56:14of social media; as power relations are
56:16temporarily shaken, the accused
56:18structures are forced to take some kind
56:20of action because it becomes practically
56:23very hard to pretend nothing is
56:24happening.
56:26Obviously, these newly discovered powers
56:28were not always used in a perfectly
56:30calibrated way because it was not a
56:32uniform practice and because very many
56:35of the people participating in this
56:37online public shaming were also very
56:39young, bathing in the potential power to
56:41punish someone like Miley Cyrus for
56:43wearing the wrong costume.
56:46The fact that the notion of "woke"
56:48encompasses everything from admonishing
56:51Miley Cyrus to all sorts of dramatic
56:53abuses that are criminal acts is one of
56:55the reasons it is very difficult to talk
56:57about wokeness as if it were a single
56:59thing, but we are here to do difficult
57:01things and fail.
57:04What is happening very interestingly at
57:06the macropolitical level in America
57:08during this period can be expressed
57:10through the difference between Hillary
57:12Clinton and Bernie Sanders in the 2016
57:14elections. Bernie Sanders had managed to
57:17build up completely surprising momentum
57:19by practicing some old-school leftist
57:21rhetoric. He spoke mostly about the
57:23problem of poverty, economic inequality
57:26, proposed redistributive policies,
57:28social services, the whole package. Note
57:31that Bernie Sanders was always an
57:33independent senator, not part of the
57:34Democratic Party.
57:36On the other side was Hillary Clinton,
57:38supported by the entire apparatus of the
57:41Democratic Party. This apparatus,
57:43despite its apparent progressivism, was
57:45still something fundamentally funded by
57:47big capitalists, just not those who had
57:49bet on Trump.
57:51Hillary Clinton was also a woman, and
57:53there was this fairytale-like
57:55perspective that a crowning American
57:57civilizational moment would happen where
57:59the first African American president
58:01would hand the baton to the first female
58:03president.
58:05Hillary Clinton's campaign heavily
58:07integrated the very popular notions of
58:09identity politics into its speeches,
58:11talking about intersectionality,
58:13systemic racism, and how white people
58:15need to acknowledge their privilege.
58:18The way she did this was quite amusing
58:21and perfectly representative of the
58:23situation because in a speech on
58:25February 16, 2016, she said, and I
58:27paraphrase, sure, the problems with
58:29banks, Wall Street, and economic
58:31inequality are real and big and I’ll
58:34deal with those too, rest assured, but
58:36how will that solve the problem of
58:38racism?
58:40Hmm, the country's problems are multiple
58:42and intersectional; we cannot focus just
58:45on this economic inequality thing,
58:47parenthetically, the way Bernie does.
58:50In short, the elites of the Democratic
58:53Party found in identity politics an
58:55instrument to decouple leftist
58:57progressivism from economic policies.
59:00They discovered that it was enough to
59:02gesture toward the fact that they know
59:04all those internet memes and, in this
59:06way, satisfy an important base of voters
59:08.
59:10Meanwhile, there were numerous
59:11discussions within the so-called left
59:13where people were asking, is it okay to
59:16vote for Bernie Sanders, considering he
59:18is a white man?
59:20That is what the essentialization I was
59:22talking about looks like in practice. A
59:24certain part of a person's
59:25intersectional identity becomes
59:27essential, instead of the policies they
59:29have consistently supported over the
59:31course of 40 years.
59:33And for the rest of the power structures
59:35, this transformation of leftism into
59:37identity politics was a kind of blessing
59:39, because the way you can satisfy
59:41leftist demands under these conditions
59:43is through eminently achievable symbolic
59:45actions, because the problem is no
59:47longer with general economic inequality
59:49and the political power exerted by
59:51corporations and mega-capitalists, but
59:53with how many African American women
59:55work in your corporation or not, how
59:57many are of different sexual
59:59orientations and have their hair dyed in
1:00:01an interesting way.
1:00:04If you check the box, if they are
1:00:06sufficiently integrated symbolically,
1:00:08leftism is solved. What more do they
1:00:10want? What is the problem now?
1:00:12We even have these ads saying, our
1:00:14corporation is with you. Well done guys
1:00:16, girls, and absolutely everyone in
1:00:19between. You are doing a great job at
1:00:21what you do. Keep it up.
1:00:23In the year 2020, after the 2,753 rd
1:00:26abusive killing of an African American
1:00:28person by the American police, on June
1:00:316th, one of the largest protests in
1:00:33American history took place under the
1:00:36chant of Black Lives Matter. What
1:00:38followed during the Biden presidency was
1:00:40indeed a significant wave of policies
1:00:42aimed at symbolically advancing
1:00:44individuals of diverse ethnicities
1:00:46through various institutions.
1:00:49The Democratic Party's electoral
1:00:51strategy, which had been the case since
1:00:53the 90s, was to promote elites from
1:00:55within discriminated groups in the hope
1:00:57that displaying this apparent inclusion
1:00:59would then secure part of the
1:01:01discriminated group's vote.
1:01:04It was actually their primary strategy
1:01:06and the way they appeared to care about
1:01:08progressivism while avoiding the more
1:01:10complicated problems of economic
1:01:12inequality.
1:01:13After the Black Lives Matter protests
1:01:15and during the Biden presidency,
1:01:17especially in corporations and
1:01:19universities, the level at which
1:01:21compensatory policies began to be
1:01:23applied became quite bizarre, in a way
1:01:25impossible to perceive from Romania
1:01:27unless you intentionally start
1:01:29investigating many testimonies.
1:01:31For example, this African American
1:01:33professor who resigned from the faculty
1:01:35where he taught, because the way
1:01:37identity politics notions were applied
1:01:39at an administrative level had become
1:01:41downright offensive.
1:01:43The problem with such testimonies is
1:01:45that they are already being
1:01:47instrumentalized by conservatives at Fox
1:01:49News to show how absurd the radical left
1:01:51has become and how the world is going to
1:01:53hell. As a result, if you consider
1:01:55yourself a leftist, it easily becomes a
1:01:58kind of betrayal to pay attention to
1:02:00such examples as anything other than
1:02:02isolated, exaggerated exceptions.
1:02:04So, the discussion about how much
1:02:06American society has or hasn't
1:02:08overreached with affirmative action
1:02:10policies is a minefield. Just saying the
1:02:13word "exaggerated" in this context is
1:02:15enough to raise blood pressure
1:02:17everywhere around.
1:02:19But how could we ever imagine that this
1:02:21package of ideas I've been talking about
1:02:23, so complicated and so ambitious,
1:02:25wouldn't end up being applied in
1:02:27completely aberrant ways when it meets
1:02:29institutional bureaucracy.
1:02:32What I mean is, imagine something like
1:02:34the IRS trying to successfully implement
1:02:37social diversity directives. Returning
1:02:39to it, what I found interesting about
1:02:41this particular African American
1:02:43professor's article, although there are
1:02:45many similar ones, is that it describes
1:02:47how the dynamics already mentioned at
1:02:49the top of the Democratic Party and
1:02:51within corporations play out at an
1:02:53academic level.
1:02:54Infinite energy towards organizing
1:02:56workshops and courses on race,
1:02:58colonialism, white supremacy, power, and
1:03:01privilege, endless discussions around
1:03:03the star books in this field, White
1:03:05Fragility and How to Be an Antiracist,
1:03:08launching a serious internal audit to
1:03:10identify where traces of racism might
1:03:13still be hiding in the curriculum, and
1:03:15ensuring that 67%of new hires identify
1:03:17as people of color.
1:03:20On the other hand, at the very same time
1:03:23, when university employees, from
1:03:25professors to cleaning staff, tried to
1:03:27unionize to collectively negotiate more
1:03:30reasonable salaries and rights, the
1:03:32university hired a consulting firm
1:03:34specialized in union busting, a firm
1:03:36also used by Amazon.
1:03:39And the firm did its job.
1:03:41The university managed to prevent
1:03:43unionization while gesturing all this
1:03:45apparent infinite care for potential
1:03:47identity-based offenses.
1:03:50Beyond these things, it should be
1:03:52mentioned that another major reason why
1:03:54American university professors are
1:03:56somewhat forced to adapt to such campus
1:03:58atmospheres is that only about 25%of
1:04:01them have stable tenured positions.
1:04:04The rest, the majority, are hired on
1:04:06short contracts, which can very easily
1:04:08not be renewed if the professor proves
1:04:11to be problematic, commits
1:04:12microaggressions, or protests too much
1:04:15regarding potential administrative
1:04:17shadiness.
1:04:19Here is yet another way in which
1:04:20economic precariousness plays an intense
1:04:23role in the spread of this identity
1:04:25politics.
1:04:26I propose we stop here now and try to
1:04:28draw some conclusions in an attempt to
1:04:30tie together some of the things
1:04:32discussed.
1:04:33I hope you agree.
1:04:35The starting point was the absolute
1:04:37importance of words and the scandalous
1:04:39title of that clip I made seven years
1:04:41ago.
1:04:42The title itself was meant to draw
1:04:44attention to the fact that it is an
1:04:46annoying way of framing the issue, if
1:04:48you're allowed to say so. In the
1:04:50conclusion of the clip, I said that I
1:04:52don't see how this focus on words could
1:04:54resolve the problems of material
1:04:56conditions that facilitate
1:04:57marginalization and discrimination. More
1:05:00precisely, how do you convince two
1:05:02people living in poverty who are cursing
1:05:04at each other in existential anger that
1:05:06the problem in their lives is that they
1:05:08are using a word that is ugly? This is
1:05:10why I said at the beginning that my
1:05:12argument hasn't really changed in my
1:05:14head over the last seven years, to my
1:05:16concern, as that is normally not a very
1:05:18good thing. It is good to have your
1:05:20perspectives challenged, but what I was
1:05:22saying there actually outlines a
1:05:24fundamental problem that arises when you
1:05:26grasp leftism; we end up understanding
1:05:28only this.
1:05:30To what extent can you say that you are
1:05:32recording societal progress if you only
1:05:34change the language of a dialogue while
1:05:37material marginalizations remain the
1:05:39same; if these ugly words are no longer
1:05:41used, but in the meantime we all live in
1:05:43even greater economic insecurity, is it
1:05:45a victory for leftism or not? All the
1:05:48theory we talked about in this clip is
1:05:50very much organized around the power of
1:05:52words.
1:05:54In theory, words are powerful enough to
1:05:56change reality, but can they really
1:05:58change it enough to improve the material
1:06:00conditions in which we all exist?
1:06:04Is there a level where, if we all police
1:06:06each other so that no one ever says an
1:06:08unkind word again, greater fairness and
1:06:10equality of opportunity will
1:06:12automatically form in society?
1:06:15Is there a combination of language that
1:06:17, once used, will make us less
1:06:19vulnerable to global capitalist
1:06:21structures and the scale of economic
1:06:23inequality?
1:06:27These rhetorical questions are also a
1:06:29bit biased, because normally it
1:06:30shouldn't be one or the other, we
1:06:32shouldn't have to choose between using
1:06:34less discriminatory language and
1:06:36material issues, but the theme of this
1:06:38clip is precisely the fact that one part
1:06:40of the discussion has hijacked and
1:06:42eclipsed the other, that this is
1:06:44something that has already happened,
1:06:45that an important part of the history of
1:06:48this hijacking happens somewhere in the
1:06:50middle between very juicy academic
1:06:52theories, enthusiastic youth on the
1:06:53internet, and traditional power
1:06:55structures that realize they can mimic
1:06:57progressivism while ignoring the
1:06:59economic side of the problem.
1:07:04To complicate the situation even more,
1:07:06and brace yourselves a bit, the academic
1:07:08theories discussed practically insist
1:07:11that language means material conditions
1:07:13, that language itself is a material
1:07:15condition that shapes reality.
1:07:18This idea is actually quite fascinating
1:07:20, and in pursuing it, it practically
1:07:22gives the green light to the fight for
1:07:24language as a fight for material
1:07:26conditions. So you no longer have to
1:07:28choose between one or the other, because
1:07:30they are the same thing. This notion is
1:07:32by no means entirely wrong. There are
1:07:35certainly very concrete effects to
1:07:36changing language, but it just as
1:07:38certainly has limits to its application
1:07:40that I feel we are discovering right now
1:07:42in real time.
1:07:44I think we are in the very process of
1:07:47deeply feeling how this experiment of
1:07:49focusing on the theoretical materiality
1:07:51of language unfolds while general
1:07:53poverty becomes increasingly severe.
1:07:56I would say it doesn't seem to be going
1:07:58very well.
1:07:59I would say the political power of
1:08:01leftism has been successfully
1:08:03neutralized and cornered on a leash so
1:08:05it can no longer bite.
1:08:07Another very dramatic consequence of
1:08:09transforming leftism into identity
1:08:11politics is that whoever doesn't use the
1:08:13correct language is not a leftist and is
1:08:15kicked out of the bunker.
1:08:17And here we really hit a major problem,
1:08:20because in this way, people's
1:08:21participation in the movement becomes
1:08:23conditional on the ability to use the
1:08:25right words.
1:08:27It bears repeating. People's
1:08:29participation in that movement, which
1:08:31should really include everyone and
1:08:33especially those educationally
1:08:34disadvantaged, ends up depending on
1:08:36whether they know all the tricks of the
1:08:38language or not.
1:08:40Only after they learn how to speak are
1:08:42they allowed to participate in the
1:08:43movement. Until then, let them keep
1:08:46learning.
1:08:47And where are they supposed to learn?
1:08:49What kind of leftism is it where you
1:08:50have to take a test to be admitted? I'm
1:08:53not talking about what's happening right
1:08:55now, today, tomorrow. Maybe it will
1:08:57change tomorrow. I'm talking about what
1:08:59has already happened in the last 15
1:09:00years. It has already happened.
1:09:03If that’s what so-called leftism looked
1:09:05like in action, it’s quite easy to see
1:09:07how it can become inherently alienating
1:09:09to the very people it was supposed to
1:09:11co-opt.
1:09:14What I wanted to show is that the way
1:09:16this shift happened wasn't just a
1:09:18capitalist plot that managed to hijack
1:09:20the image of something that was actually
1:09:22perfectly valid—which would have been
1:09:24fine if not for those damn capitalists—
1:09:26but that there were already inherent
1:09:28problems in the whole package that were
1:09:30then successfully exploited by political
1:09:32opponents.
1:09:36As we have discussed concepts of power
1:09:38and Foucault, who explains nicely how
1:09:40power is atomized in society in a way
1:09:42that everyone can participate in at
1:09:44least a grain of it, we cannot help but
1:09:46mention that the ferocity with which
1:09:48these ideas spread on the internet also
1:09:50has something to do with the
1:09:52satisfaction of newly discovered powers
1:09:54.
1:09:55After the 2008 economic crisis and its
1:09:58resolution through an austerity that
1:10:00kept the exact same system running, the
1:10:02sense of impotence in the face of this
1:10:04capitalism was great.
1:10:06And since you can't structurally affect
1:10:08the capitalism that oppresses you, the
1:10:10second-best option to feel like you're
1:10:12participating in progress turned out to
1:10:14be hunting down people on the internet
1:10:16who say the wrong things.
1:10:18Social media arrived at the perfect time
1:10:20to function as a valve through which
1:10:22people could feel that they were still
1:10:24practicing a type of leftism that
1:10:26produces effects in real time.
1:10:29In the last few years, after some long
1:10:31experiences and a dose of
1:10:33self-reflection, the fervor of the hunt
1:10:35seems to have tempered, but in the early
1:10:382010s, it was massive and left deep
1:10:40marks regardless.
1:10:42From this fervor, an intolerance for
1:10:44intra-community criticism also developed
1:10:46, because the need for satisfaction was
1:10:48high. Anyone who challenged it was a bit
1:10:50of a vibe killer, ruining the party
1:10:52where the sensation really was one of a
1:10:54certain progressive success through the
1:10:56identification of people who perpetuate
1:10:58bad cultural manifestations.
1:11:01And there was indeed a certain success,
1:11:03only that good intentions or the
1:11:04struggle toward a correct goal do not
1:11:06exclude all those classic problems that
1:11:08come with the sense of power. Even with
1:11:10righteousness in your hands, your
1:11:12behavior can still become brutal.
1:11:15Righteousness in itself is no guarantee
1:11:17, it creates no obligation for anyone to
1:11:19listen to you just because you are right
1:11:21.
1:11:23You don't have to be at some high
1:11:24hierarchy level to have your behavior
1:11:27corrupted by various experiences that
1:11:29give you a sense of power, of
1:11:30superiority.
1:11:32The sensation itself is addictive, which
1:11:34means it self-propagates and creates its
1:11:37own conditions for reproduction. Meaning
1:11:39, you keep seeking out the situations
1:11:41that produce it, not because you are
1:11:43perfectly calibrated in your path, but
1:11:45because it feels good. Where that
1:11:47boundary lies between how good it feels
1:11:49and how justified you are in each
1:11:51situation is something extremely
1:11:52difficult to identify and practice.
1:11:55It requires a mental maturity that I
1:11:57wouldn't suspect many people have, let
1:11:59alone young people.
1:12:01So, the fact that excesses occurred is
1:12:03actually what was completely expected in
1:12:05this equation, not some strange
1:12:07exception.
1:12:09Intensifying the notion of
1:12:10intersectionality to the point that you
1:12:13, from an outside group, have no chance
1:12:15of understanding my life experience,
1:12:17also fulfills a relevant power function
1:12:19.
1:12:21It's a way for you to build a certain
1:12:23authority as someone who possesses
1:12:25privileged, rare knowledge that cannot
1:12:27really be understood by just anyone.
1:12:30It is a perfectly intelligible and
1:12:32effective method of self-fortification,
1:12:35only its price, as long as it's
1:12:36practiced for the sake of power, is
1:12:38precisely this: building concrete walls
1:12:41across which no dialogue can happen.
1:12:43Because in this equation, accepting the
1:12:45possibility of dialogue becomes
1:12:47equivalent to giving up a certain sense
1:12:49of power.
1:12:51You have to come down from the top of
1:12:52the hill.
1:12:54And again, I'm not saying these things
1:12:56happen intentionally and that this is
1:12:58what people explicitly set out to do,
1:13:00but that practices which grant any kind
1:13:02of power weight against an otherwise
1:13:04desperate societal background are very
1:13:06hard to control with one's own mind.
1:13:10It is very difficult to calibrate a
1:13:12feeling as complicated as power when you
1:13:14are operating from a background of
1:13:16desperation.
1:13:17I wanted to check off this aspect a bit
1:13:19because I don't think it's minor at all
1:13:21, but at the same time, I don't think
1:13:23intense focus on it leads to any
1:13:25significant pragmatic conclusions.
1:13:28Let's go even further now and identify
1:13:30other curious consequences that I
1:13:32mentioned at the beginning can become
1:13:35roughly anti-leftist, even though,
1:13:37likewise, they follow a clear and
1:13:39theoretically valid logical course.
1:13:41Take, for example, the problem of a poor
1:13:44young African-American man who has no
1:13:46access to education and healthcare. Then
1:13:48we have the famous discussion. Is he at
1:13:50a disadvantage because he is
1:13:52African-American or because he is poor?
1:13:54Classical leftist universalism would
1:13:56urge us to focus on the broad category
1:13:59determined by material conditions,
1:14:01driven by the notion that poverty is
1:14:03poverty.
1:14:05The way to get out of it is through the
1:14:06same kind of political organizing,
1:14:08regardless of the reason why one ended
1:14:10up there.
1:14:12The argument against this position is
1:14:14that, in doing so, you ignore 400 years
1:14:16of history that created the specific
1:14:19conditions of that poverty and
1:14:20marginalization.
1:14:23Doing this can be considered a form of
1:14:25racism, as you are basically minimizing
1:14:27what 400 years of slavery meant for an
1:14:29ethnic community.
1:14:31The specific difficulties of the poor
1:14:33African-American community have extra
1:14:35nuances compared to the difficulties of
1:14:37poor white communities.
1:14:39Ignoring these nuances leads to unequal
1:14:42results, even with general anti-poverty
1:14:44measures.
1:14:46This is the main position that emerges
1:14:48from Critical Race Theory, only beyond
1:14:50this theory, the way it has spread
1:14:52through internet culture, as I have said
1:14:55before, is by identifying smaller and
1:14:57smaller groups that have their own
1:14:58conditions and cannot participate in
1:15:00various universal measures because it
1:15:03would be just as inequitable.
1:15:05The whole identity politics package, in
1:15:07fact, still through some valid logical
1:15:10reasons, allows for seemingly
1:15:11ever-widening gaps between various
1:15:13groups of people who, at the end of the
1:15:15day, all have their own characteristics
1:15:18, and thus the theory allows us to
1:15:20justify more and more how vastly
1:15:21different we actually are.
1:15:24A sentence like "we are all human" thus
1:15:26becomes completely suspicious because it
1:15:28ignores so many specificities and
1:15:30particular sensibilities that have been
1:15:32discovered through so much
1:15:34identification work.
1:15:36Coincidentally, this process overlaps
1:15:38perfectly with capitalism's cultural
1:15:40force toward as much individualization
1:15:43as possible, on separating buyers into
1:15:45unique beings with completely unique
1:15:47needs that can be satisfied only through
1:15:49a certain combination of products and
1:15:51services.
1:15:52For this reason, this type of
1:15:54identity-based leftism does not threaten
1:15:56in any relevant way the capitalist
1:15:58structures that have shown time and
1:16:00again that, if needed, they embrace it.
1:16:03No problem, it’s no big deal.
1:16:05Traditional leftism has as its universal
1:16:07goal the destruction of the categories
1:16:09that separate and classify people, first
1:16:12and foremost being the category of
1:16:14economic class. The goal is not to "eat
1:16:16the rich," but for the class category to
1:16:18disappear altogether, culminating in the
1:16:21effort to melt away the gigantic
1:16:22economic differences between people.
1:16:25In general, the movement is toward the
1:16:27awareness of that fundamental identity
1:16:29based on which we have everything in
1:16:31common, namely that of being human
1:16:33beings.
1:16:35As this seems vague and as hard to
1:16:37accomplish as possible, an emergency
1:16:39solution is that until we get there, we
1:16:41must identify the extra-disadvantaged
1:16:43groups that are even further behind than
1:16:45the disadvantaged majority.
1:16:48And perfectly reasonably, there are very
1:16:50valid arguments for this, but the major
1:16:52trap is the rigidification of these
1:16:54separations and the transformation of a
1:16:57temporary solution into a permanent one
1:16:59.
1:17:00The trap lies in the constant
1:17:01theoretical justification for
1:17:03perpetuating this separation, claiming
1:17:05that the differences between people of
1:17:07different races and genders will never
1:17:09actually be leveled, and that as a
1:17:11result, we can only pursue the winning
1:17:13of compensatory rights and privileges.
1:17:16From this position, dubious phenomena
1:17:18arise, such as a hierarchy of poverty.
1:17:22In America, a very poor white person
1:17:24struggling to live from one day to the
1:17:26next is considered much more privileged
1:17:28than an African American in the same
1:17:30situation; and what is the political
1:17:32effect of harping on the fact that poor
1:17:34white people are simply in a different
1:17:36category than poor people of other
1:17:38ethnicities?
1:17:40Is it not an extremely potent tool for
1:17:42dividing a class of people who actually
1:17:44currently share the vast majority of
1:17:46their problems?
1:17:47Let's try another formulation to
1:17:49illustrate the problem.
1:17:52The concept I have been circling without
1:17:54directly addressing is that of
1:17:56affirmative action.
1:17:58The clearest example in Romania is those
1:18:00few spots reserved for Roma in high
1:18:02schools and universities. Theoretically
1:18:05, it's a good measure, better than
1:18:07nothing, right? I will exaggerate a bit
1:18:09for the sake of illustration, but the
1:18:11tension we are talking about here is
1:18:13between a world where even more special
1:18:15spots are created for Roma in all sorts
1:18:17of institutions—spots upon spots—versus
1:18:20a world where there is no longer a need
1:18:22for such special spots because the
1:18:24underlying material conditions that
1:18:26created the need for them have
1:18:27disappeared.
1:18:30The second option seems extremely
1:18:32difficult and reeks of vague idealism,
1:18:34but what kind of world is it where we
1:18:36accept that this is simply no longer
1:18:38possible, that there is no point in
1:18:40setting it as an idea or a goal, because
1:18:42it could never happen?
1:18:45Another fundamental characteristic of
1:18:47classical leftism, beyond universalism,
1:18:50is a certain belief in the possibility
1:18:52of progress—that things can still be
1:18:54changed, even if it is hard, even if it
1:18:57is slow. What Foucault sets in motion in
1:18:59his writings is a very intellectually
1:19:01pretentious skepticism, which senses
1:19:03that all that so-called progress is
1:19:05actually an illusion and that we are
1:19:07fools to believe in it.
1:19:09Things do not improve, they have no
1:19:11reason to improve; they remain the same
1:19:13oppressive structures that only fragment
1:19:15into more complicated variants when
1:19:17confronted, but their power remains.
1:19:21This pessimism is taken up academically
1:19:23in critical race theory and ends up
1:19:25completely combatting that leftist
1:19:27naivety regarding radically better
1:19:29horizons, only they don't call it
1:19:31pessimism, but racial realism.
1:19:34Far be it from me to dictate to an
1:19:36oppressed community what state of mind
1:19:38they should have regarding their own
1:19:40systemic discrimination.
1:19:42I can only observe that this movement,
1:19:44and especially its nuanced-lacking
1:19:46proliferation on the internet and
1:19:48expansion into all sorts of other fields
1:19:50, actually ends up functioning as a type
1:19:52of capitalist realism.
1:19:54The future is once again cancelled. We
1:19:56can no longer even imagine a society
1:19:58vastly different from the one we already
1:20:01live in. We can no longer afford it; it
1:20:03would be naive. We can only hope to make
1:20:05small adjustments, small housekeeping
1:20:07tasks in the frictions that already
1:20:09exist between various groups of people
1:20:11who identify differently based on
1:20:13intersectional criteria.
1:20:16The starting point of this train of
1:20:17thought is that this is the trap of
1:20:19rigidifying these separations, which
1:20:21make sense as temporary measures, but
1:20:23can become very dubious if they turn
1:20:25into something permanent that is then
1:20:27also theoretically grounded.
1:20:30If you recall, one of the theoretical
1:20:33points checked off earlier was what
1:20:35Gayatri Spivak said about strategic
1:20:37essentialism, namely the idea that in
1:20:39order to fight politically to ensure the
1:20:41rights of the oppressed category you
1:20:43find yourself in, you must identify
1:20:45intensely with that category, even if
1:20:47that category is dubious in itself
1:20:49because its parameters are defined by
1:20:52someone else.
1:20:53You accept the identity terms imposed by
1:20:56the system just enough to reject them,
1:20:58and indeed it is something complicated
1:21:00to maintain, you stay in a difficult
1:21:02limbo, it is hard, but in this context,
1:21:05strategic essentialism meant temporary
1:21:07essentialism with a specific purpose for
1:21:09a limited duration.
1:21:11If you take "strategic" out of the
1:21:13equation, then you are left with just "
1:21:15essentialism," something generally
1:21:18considered a big no-no from every point
1:21:20of view. If it is still not clear at
1:21:22this point what this essentialism means
1:21:24, what the Nazis did to the Jews was
1:21:26called essentialism; they separated them
1:21:29from the category of humans. That is
1:21:31what essentialism means: adopting the
1:21:33notion that that person is not a human,
1:21:35they are a Jew; that person is not a
1:21:37human, they are a woman; that person is
1:21:40not a human, they are a...and so on.
1:21:43Reducing a human being to a single
1:21:45aspect of their own person, a single
1:21:47part that supposedly defines them
1:21:49completely.
1:21:50When I said that even Gayatri Spivak
1:21:52came to regret the term strategic
1:21:54essentialism, it is because just a few
1:21:56years later she realized that people
1:21:59were taking it and using it as a
1:22:00justification for essentialism, period,
1:22:03without the strategic part.
1:22:05Whereas before there was an impetus
1:22:07toward dismantling stereotypes and it
1:22:09was generally considered undesirable to
1:22:12judge yourself or to judge another
1:22:13person's characteristics based on racial
1:22:16or gender identity, now this judgment
1:22:18becomes essential.
1:22:21All people must identify with the
1:22:22general characteristics of the race or
1:22:24gender they belong to, because only in
1:22:26this way can they participate in the
1:22:28political discussion surrounding
1:22:30privileges and oppressions.
1:22:32If you aren't aware that you're speaking
1:22:34from the position of a white
1:22:36heterosexual man and don't identify with
1:22:38the matrix of privileges provided by
1:22:40that position, it's better not to speak
1:22:42, better to keep quiet. Equally, if you
1:22:44aren't aware that you're speaking from
1:22:45the position of a poor African-American
1:22:47woman with all the related matrix of
1:22:49marginalizations, then again, you’d
1:22:50better keep quiet, because you don’t
1:22:52know what you're talking about, you
1:22:54don’t even know what you’ve been through
1:22:56, so how could you say anything?
1:22:58This is another way of creating
1:23:00cleavages between people that exclude
1:23:02the possibility of dialogue without a
1:23:04prior internal intersectional inventory
1:23:06, and in this way, it becomes very, very
1:23:09hard to say anything and even harder for
1:23:11anyone to hear you.
1:23:14We have to jump over 17,000 fences
1:23:16before we can connect based on what we
1:23:18actually have in common and all these
1:23:20things, while the theory behind it
1:23:22remains somewhat valid throughout this
1:23:24time.
1:23:25People really do have different
1:23:27perspectives depending on the social
1:23:29conditions in which they grew up.
1:23:31How much you press the accelerator pedal
1:23:33on this idea until it becomes clear that
1:23:35we have no way of understanding each
1:23:37other because of these different
1:23:39perspectives is left to each person's
1:23:41discretion.
1:23:42But again, I feel the need to keep
1:23:44repeating, when that temporary
1:23:46essentialization becomes something
1:23:48permanent, the situation changes quite
1:23:50dramatically.
1:23:52In the final analysis, if the world is
1:23:54perceptible only as tribes and if this
1:23:57is the confused conclusion of this whole
1:23:59situation circulated on the internet as
1:24:01memes, how long do you think it takes
1:24:03until a group that identifies as white
1:24:05coalesces even more virulently in a form
1:24:08to claim their own rights and privileges
1:24:10apparently threatened by opposing tribes
1:24:12?
1:24:14And such very nasty loopholes are opened
1:24:17by mindless essentialization, which is
1:24:19also why, historically speaking,
1:24:21essentialization is generally considered
1:24:24a big no-no.
1:24:27Of all the ideas discussed, this very
1:24:29real momentum toward the
1:24:30permanentization of individual
1:24:32essentializations based on race, gender
1:24:34, and sexual orientation is probably the
1:24:37most anti-leftist thing of all and one
1:24:39of the main reasons why it’s unclear how
1:24:41we could call this level of identity
1:24:43politics something leftist.
1:24:47What remains common on the surface is
1:24:49the general struggle toward the
1:24:50emancipation of oppressed groups, but
1:24:52the method itself becomes something very
1:24:54questionable.
1:24:56When this whole construct ends up
1:24:58defining what leftism means enough that
1:25:00all other aspects based on which it is
1:25:03worth uniting disappear from the
1:25:04landscape, then again, what kind of
1:25:06victory is this exactly, and whose?
1:25:10In any case, in closing, from my
1:25:11intersectional position, I confess that
1:25:14I personally fundamentally don't really
1:25:16understand these things. I don't
1:25:18understand how I could have nothing in
1:25:20common with a poor, disabled, lesbian
1:25:22African-American woman. This thought
1:25:24seems absolutely terrifying to me
1:25:26because, emotionally, it is crystal
1:25:29clear that the category that unites us
1:25:31is, quite obviously, human suffering. I
1:25:34know human suffering all too well;
1:25:36regardless of its very specific nuances
1:25:39, pain is pain, and pain is universal.
1:25:43Just as I don't need an incredibly
1:25:45specific description of your individual
1:25:47pain to know that you are hurting, I
1:25:49also don't feel I need every possible
1:25:51sociopolitical and historical coordinate
1:25:53to understand that there is a certain
1:25:55human suffering which should be—and can
1:25:57be—alleviated through concrete actions
1:26:00we can take together.
1:26:02The notion that dialogue between us is
1:26:04never possible as long as I don't feel
1:26:07the exact, exact same specific pain as
1:26:09you, again, seems absolutely terrifying
1:26:11to me, and I honestly don't know what I
1:26:13could do with it or where to put it.
1:26:17I couldn't imagine anything more
1:26:18paralyzing or more contrary to our
1:26:20ability to cooperate for common goals,
1:26:22of which there are many.
1:26:25From my point of view, it is hard to
1:26:27find a stronger common denominator than
1:26:29this category of human suffering, which
1:26:32we have certainly all tasted, and a very
1:26:34significant part of which is caused by
1:26:36the material conditions we find
1:26:38ourselves in.
1:26:40There is also a dimension of human
1:26:42suffering related to the mystery of
1:26:44existing under a sky full of distant
1:26:46stars, and indeed, that is more
1:26:48complicated, but the part of suffering
1:26:50that comes from material conditions is
1:26:52perfectly addressable and always depends
1:26:55on our ability to find enough common
1:26:57ground to improve our situation
1:26:59regarding money, housing, health, and
1:27:01education, so that we can then concern
1:27:03ourselves more intensely with the other
1:27:05mystery—the one about the sky.
1:27:08That’s about it for now.
1:27:10I confess that I post these clips so
1:27:12rarely because I keep experiencing very
1:27:15annoying health issues.
1:27:17If you want to improve my financial
1:27:19situation before we solve it for
1:27:21everyone, your support on Patreon is
1:27:23deeply appreciated. Thank you very much
1:27:25to the people who already support me,
1:27:27and I wish you all a pleasant
1:27:29universalism.
1:28:00>> Yeah.

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