The Left is not woke.[…] Susan Neiman, in her book published this year by Presença, presents us with a manifesto against tribalism and identity-based particularism in political struggle. She believes that woke thinking and behaviour are traps that distance the Left from the values ​​enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that kill hope and obscure alternatives for change.

“Is it possible to define woke?” he asks. And he answers: it begins with concern for marginalized people and ends with the reduction of each person to the prism of their marginalization. It is this reduction that is at the root of identity politics and tribalism. The Left’s attraction to identity politics is particularly tragic, because it makes it abandon the terrain of human rights and universalism where its origin and strength lie. “Tribalism is a dangerous game, as the Right realized very early on: if the demands of minorities are not seen as human rights, but as the rights of specific groups, what prevents a majority from insisting on its own rights?”

This is, we could say, a book of political philosophy applied to the analysis of the current situation of much of the Left. The author seeks to reach many of those who want to understand and help solve the problems we face in contemporary societies. Starting from the classics of the Enlightenment, she recovers the basic ideas of universalism - solidarity, justice, progress and commitment to doubt -, demonstrating their relevance to the formulation of Left-wing policies.

At the same time, it shakes up the darkest views on progress and the modern world, considering that, although they are in many cases valid and legitimate analytical exercises, they suffer from two problems. They focus human experience on traumatic and negative dimensions, anchoring us in the past, obscuring or even ignoring all other dimensions. In doing so, they undermine the future and the hope for change.

Because the steps taken towards progress have sometimes had terrible consequences, we have lost hope in progress. Disappointments are real and sometimes devastating. But woke theories, instead of pointing to solutions, place disbelief at the center of human experience, “creating a semblance of suspicion that constitutes the background music of contemporary Western culture.”