Let’s Talk About Wokeness…
Before we get started, let’s look at two widely used words by both activists and academics who study activists — slacktivism and performative activism.
Slacktivism is characterised for those who use digital technology to engage in online activism with very little effort or commitment (in internet terms: laziness).
On the other hand, performative activism is characterised for those who engage in activism to increase their social status or capital (in internet terms: to appear ‘woke’).
Criticism of slacktivism and performative activism often involves the idea that superficial online action undermines political action in real life. This is a digital dualistic perspective which is the idea that online and offline are separate worlds (Turkle, 2017; Morozov, 2012). Tufecki (2017) rejects this idea and argues that the two are increasingly meshed and interconnected. This can be understood by the following example.
The Black Lives Matter Movement (uprising of 2020) used social media to organise protests offline. Around the same time, the #BlackoutTuesday campaign was initiated by the music industry — posting black empty boxes with the same hashtag as an action to support the movement and fight against systemic racism and police brutality.
This from my observation and many others has been critiqued for being highly performative. Within a few days, Instagram feeds were flooded with black images by brands, celebrities and their followers which eventually turned into a fad. Here’s where it went wrong, black posts began to flood the #blacklivesmatter hashtag which suppressed important information about protests and the movement.
But if we were to apply Tufecki’s argument and the previously discussed cute cat theory, #BlackoutTuesday despite being counterproductive did increase attention directed at the Black Lives Matter movement, especially after activists and users pointed the wrong use of the hashtag. It also led to more online discussions and publications about performative allyship and wokeness.
What is wokeness? To put it in simple terms, it is slang for social awareness. The concept of wokeness stems from a good place — ‘woke’ is a historically black phrase for ‘being awake’ to social, political, cultural realities of our surroundings. Wokeness was popularised by Black Lives Matter to expose white supremacist ideologies. Later it was appropriated, entered the mainstream internet and became ‘performative wokeness’. This is similar to performative activism discussed above.
Here’s a video by Ayishat Akanbi that best explains the problem with wokeness:
I find it relevant to conclude with this video because it addresses the ambiguity of our realities, and how ‘wokeness’ or political cultures reduce complex issues to black and white, both literally and figuratively — this only leads to shutting down important conversations and leaves little space for perspective.
Solution: Attack the root, instead of the branches.
Inquilab Zindabad!
Long Live the Revolution!
References:
Jennings, R. (2020, June 3). Blackout Tuesday and performative allyship on social media. Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/6/3/21279336/blackout-tuesday-black-lives-matter-instagram-performative-allyship
Morozov, E. (2011). The net delusion: How not to liberate the world. Penguin UK.
Romano, A. (2020, October 9). What is woke: How a Black movement watchword got co-opted in a culture war. Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy
Tufekci, Z. (2017). Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Turkle, S. (2017). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Hachette UK.
