What is it about?
The revolutionary upheaval currently sweeping across Western democracies on parade under the banner term “woke” calls for rethinking the foundations of ethics and politics. The social justice movement challenges us to fundamentally reconceive our being with one another in society and to re-embrace our profoundest traditions. Focus on identities, however, has become divisive and vexatious. In Social Identities and Social Justice, William Franke indicates a way to exit from the current impasse empoisoning politics in Western democracies by thinking the concept of identity through to its grounds in the non-identity (or undelimited human potential) that all share and that unites rather than divides us. The traditions of negative theology (admission of ignorance of God) and apophasis (self-critical unsaying of one’s own certainties) are leveraged for outlining a truly relational approach to public discourse. We must open our concepts of mutually exclusive identities towards their infinite truth rooted in our unlimited interconnectedness. Doing so, we open our ideas beyond their finite content and open ourselves to building a world together.
Featured Image
Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash
Why is it important?
The current impasse in politics with ideologically polarized factions unable to dialogue with each other spells death for democracy. This book shows a way out of this predicament through resourcing our deep traditions of negative theology and exercising self-critique.
Perspectives
Apophatic thinking entails retreat from any kind of fixed identities. This is important for keeping us in relation to the whole. Any verbal formula is divisive. Its terms inevitably define what falls within and without its compass. To maintain our relation to the whole without exclusions we need to recursively retreat from our own formulations progressively. Even this formulation "without exclusions" is paradoxically exclusive and must be given up in orienting us to the truth that it intends.
professor of comparative literature william franke
Vanderbilt University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Unsaying Wokeism, or the Role of Self-Critique in Judging Others, May 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004703445_008.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Vienna Lecture: Living Together, An Apophatic Ethics
Keynote Lecture, Plenary Session, for 8th World Conference on Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education, May 22, 2025, Vienna, Austria The revolutionary upheaval currently sweeping across Western democracies on parade under the banner term "wokeism" calls for rethinking the foundations of ethics and politics. The social justice movement challenges us fundamentally to reconceive our being with one another in society and to reassess our profoundest traditions. There is something unmistakably right in the demand for justice for all regardless of class, race, gender, or whatever other characteristic. However, "social justice" is being brandished as a weapon today against certain categories judged by partial perspectives and prejudice to be the guilty parties in history and society. Certain identities are scapegoated to allow those wielding woke ideology to posture as avenging angels charged with the mission of canceling an unjust past and culture. Like every historical religion, wokeism has its grip on a transcendent truth shining with sacred splendor and beauty—the imperative of freedom and justice for all without exclusions—but it takes this truth over in ways that make it serve as a means of consolidating power for those who make themselves its priests and executors. In Social Identities and Social Justice, William Franke indicates a way to exit from the current impasse poisoning politics in Western democracies by thinking the concept of identity through to its grounds in the non-identity (or undelimited human potential) that all share and that unites rather than divides us. The traditions of negative theology (admission of ignorance of God) and apophasis (self-critical unsaying of one's own certainties) are leveraged for outlining a truly relational approach to public discourse. We must open our concepts of mutually exclusive identities towards their infinite truth rooted in our unlimited interconnectedness. By doing so, we open our ideas beyond their finite content and open ourselves to building a world together.
Au de-là du wokisme: la justice sociale et une éthique kénotique
Présentation du livre de William Franke, Identités sociales et justice sociale: repenser l'éthique et la politique à l'ère du wokisme, Les Pollens, Lorgue (France), 8 juin 2025
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
