Still processing this, but the thing that immediately jumped out was how much the core definition of “woke 1” and its concept of “excavation” mapped to Susan Nieman’s in Left Is Not Woke.

The very engine that powered Woke 1 drove its dysfunctions. This manifests in three distinct ways: kitsch, cannibalism, and counterculture. I will discuss the intellectual legacy of Woke 1 in the next section, but first, we must understand why Woke 1 hit its limits as a social movement.

Start with kitsch. Marx predicts that cultural movements begin at elite levels and narrow circles—among early adopters, cultural entrepreneurs, trendsetters—and then spread out to larger and larger audiences through a process of status-seeking emulation. But this process also inevitably transforms the culture in question. The difficult parts of art get sanded off for mass consumption. That which goes down easy spreads more widely. In the final moment, we are left with kitsch: a cultural object reduced to its most basic elements, requiring little to no thought to adopt and appreciate.

So it is with the excavation. “You stubbed your toe. Do you know why? Capitalism.” It is no longer necessary to have a theory of capitalism. Simply make a vague gesture in that direction, and voila: an excavation. “I bet you didn’t know that.”