I am not woke, and I'm not anti-woke either. What do I mean by that?
I don't subscribe to the idea that demographic characteristics, such as race, trump human uniqueness or our ability to connect with one another within or across cultures. I don't believe that there need to be segregated spaces for "people of colour" (an expression many of us hate, though we—though not I—use it for expediency). I support feminism, anti-racism and LGBTQ+ rights not because I want these things to be central to my identity; instead, it's because I want them to be less relevant.
"Cancelling" Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Molière will not lead us to liberation; instead, it will tear apart cultural narratives and leave us with a congeries of disconnected snippets in their place. Cultures, especially multi-ethnic cultures like Russia, Britain, China, America or France, share common histories as well as particular ones. We can tell the tales of Kievan Rus and Catherine the Great, as well as the histories of the Chechens and Buryats (and Pushkin straddles both sides of this debate, since he was biracial). We can talk of Lev Tolstoy, Thomas Paine, John Bunyan, Sojourner Truth, Cherríe Moraga and Sherman Alexie without sacrificing anything. To tell the whole story, we need to include the dominant and subaltern narratives. To omit both is to tell half a story—and make it impossible to share a common culture, whether within a nation-state or across humanity as a whole.
( And why I can't read much anti-woke criticism, and what we should do instead )
I don't subscribe to the idea that demographic characteristics, such as race, trump human uniqueness or our ability to connect with one another within or across cultures. I don't believe that there need to be segregated spaces for "people of colour" (an expression many of us hate, though we—though not I—use it for expediency). I support feminism, anti-racism and LGBTQ+ rights not because I want these things to be central to my identity; instead, it's because I want them to be less relevant.
"Cancelling" Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Molière will not lead us to liberation; instead, it will tear apart cultural narratives and leave us with a congeries of disconnected snippets in their place. Cultures, especially multi-ethnic cultures like Russia, Britain, China, America or France, share common histories as well as particular ones. We can tell the tales of Kievan Rus and Catherine the Great, as well as the histories of the Chechens and Buryats (and Pushkin straddles both sides of this debate, since he was biracial). We can talk of Lev Tolstoy, Thomas Paine, John Bunyan, Sojourner Truth, Cherríe Moraga and Sherman Alexie without sacrificing anything. To tell the whole story, we need to include the dominant and subaltern narratives. To omit both is to tell half a story—and make it impossible to share a common culture, whether within a nation-state or across humanity as a whole.
( And why I can't read much anti-woke criticism, and what we should do instead )
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