What if wokism is offensive? – release
In sociology, it is a historically common phenomenon that bears a name: « The reversal of the stigma ». The formula designates the way in which a group, which is devalued by identification with a characteristic that others attribute to it finally tends to claim it. In order to regain his dignity. Thus of the negritude theorized by Aimé Césaire reclaiming the word « negro », or the march of pride doing the same with « fag » or « gauine », or even the increasingly common use of the term « racialized » by those who are victims of racism.
It is to this type of about-face that the essayist Pierre Tevanian is working, a figure of the far left decolonial and historically close to the movement of the natives of the Republic, in Let’s be woke (Diverges editions, released on April 25, 2025). This openly militant pamphlet adopts an anti-anti-woke position, whose radicality is in his eyes to the measure of the reactionary offensive. He will draw from the thinkers of the Enlightenment usually put at the service of anti-Woke thought intellectual sources (notably Diderot) which base the values of wokism: anti-racism, the quest for equality, critical reason. Or the primary ingredients of a real universalist project, according to the author, also co -founder in 2001 of the collective The words are important with Sylvie Tissot. He joined in a radically different style the Academician Danièle Sallenave who recently affirmed in Libe:
