Recently I came across some formal academic treatments of the concept of wokeness. I found these quite revealing, because they seem to provide a useful explanatory and justificationist impetus for the blameful tone of movements like metoo and BLM , and for cancel culture in general.

What particularly interests me is how the theoretical concepts these authors use to describe wokeness dovetail with neuroscientific models of cognition like predictive processing , and with psychotherapeutic approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy. This means that wokeness can claim its methods to be consistent with the results of scientific psychology. But things are not so simple. The kinds of scientific theories of cognition and emotion that wokeness is tied to belong to empirical realism, a certain set of theoretical pre-suppositions. According to empirical realism , it make sense to talk about distinctions between true and false, accurate and distorted beliefs, the appearance of things and the actuality of things. Wokeness advocates like Hilde Lindemann, R. Basu , and J. Spencer Atkins, believe , for instance, that false beliefs about others can lead to what they call epistemic harms.

To think beyond wokeness requires that one think beyond epistemic realism, to take a thoroughgoing social constructivist perspective that sidelines blameful finger-pointing based on what is correct vs incorrect, true vs false. Instead, social constructionism is a means of bracketing or suspending any pronouncement of the real, the reasonable, or the right. In its generative moment, constructionism offers an orientation toward creating new futures, an impetus to societal transformation.

As Ken Gergen argues , “ Constructionist thought militates against the claims to ethical foundations implicit in much identity politics - that higher ground from which others can so confidently be condemned as inhumane, self-serving, prejudiced, and unjust. Constructionist thought painfully reminds us that we have no transcendent rationale upon which to rest such accusations, and that our sense of moral indignation is itself a product of historically and culturally situated traditions. And the constructionist intones, is it not possible that those we excoriate are but living also within traditions that are, for them, suffused with a sense of ethical primacy? As we find, then, social constructionism is a two edged sword in the political arena, potentially as damaging to the wielding hand as to the opposition.

If we do envision the impulse toward action as a byproduct of relational engagement, we may also refigure the institutions of blame and responsibility. For if we hold single individuals responsible for their actions, we again position ourselves symbolically as God - here the supreme judge of good and evil. And in our godlike form, we effectively deny our participation in the culture, treating ourselves as the overseeing eye, suspended above the acts of mortals. In contrast, if we envision action as a relational outcome, our sensibilities are horizontally recast. Specifically, a stance of relational responsibility is invited, one in which we approach heinous and egregious action with a curiosity of context. That is, we broaden the network of participation, to consider how the relationships in which the erring individual was involved (personal, mediated, and environmental) have brought about such an end. And, as we broaden the relational context so as to include multiple others, so should we consider their relationships and how they impinge on the actions in question. And if our concern is sufficiently great, we may eventually reach the point in which we realize our own complicity in the action. Blame and responsibility are thus distributed within the community, and indeed the culture. We are all invited thereby to join together in actions that would establish more promising future. (Here, for example, we might consider our own participation in the problem of drugs, rape, homicide, and joblessness).“