“The world is dying of too much rationality, of decisions made by engineers. I prefer women casting spells to men building EPRs. »
This profession of faith in favor of witches rather than engineers who build nuclear reactors was not started by an obscure hippie who lives in the depths of the woods. It was by the ecologist deputy Sandrine Rousseau, a professor of economics and who was, until very recently, vice-president of the University of Lille.
If an example were needed to illustrate Jean-François Braunstein’s latest book, there would probably be none better. We have known since Raymond Aron that there were “secular religions”. According to this former Sorbonne professor, wokism is the most recent example. This is the thesis he supports in religion woke (Grasset), an explosive work which, a rare thing in France, has managed to earn both the praise of the critic of World (left) than that of Figaro (right).
We met Jean-François Braunstein four years ago when he was publishing a book entitled Philosophy gone mad (Grasset). He criticized a set of new philosophical currents that broke with humanism to promote the disappearance of the sexes, racialism, animalism or transhumanism.
“At that time, I felt things coming and I was talking about theoretical excesses. This was limited to the small circle of philosophers or university activists. But since then, the woke ideas have left the faculties of human sciences to reach those of mathematics, physics and biology. They have penetrated politics, education and business. They are taught in primary and secondary school. »
“You have to believe it because it’s absurd”
Braunstein cites the example of biologists Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne, who protested against the decision of New Zealand universities to teach recognized sciences on an equal basis, including the theory of evolution and Maori creationist theses (Mātauranga Māori). . The Royal Society of Sciences replied that they had a “narrow and outdated definition of science”.
Last year, the Romanian mathematician Sergiu Klainerman, from Princeton University, protested against the omnipresence of wokism in mathematics faculties. At least, in Romania, he said, I was not accused of doing “white mathematics.” Even in France, in the faculties of medicine, we now speak of “pregnant people” and “parental milk”.
How to explain, asks Braunstein, that apparently sensible beings do not flinch when hearing that “men are pregnant”, that “women have a penis”, that “everyone can choose their sex”, that “biology is virilistic? or that “mathematics is racist”?
“I wondered for a long time. And then I understood that we were dealing with a form of religious thought. Wokism has all the characteristics of a religious movement; first by his proselytism. Rites that are religious are practiced there, such as putting the knee on the ground at the time of the death of Georges Floyd. In Canada, books were burned to spread the ashes. The word woke [éveillé], borrowed from black popular culture, itself evokes a form of revelation. As the philosopher Tertullian said [IIIe siècle], “you have to believe it because it’s absurd”! »
According to Braunstein, woke thought is based on a critique of rationalism, enlightenment and humanism. Doesn’t Sandrine Rousseau say that, for her, the problem begins with the rationalism of Descartes? She also criticizes Buffon and Linnaeus for having classified plants, and therefore “hierarchized” nature.
Gender theory is central to wokism, says Braunstein. “It allows you to get rid of the body. It is reminiscent of gnosis, a Christian heresy where the body personified evil. The Marcionist Heretics [IIe siècle] also felt that Christ could not have become a man. For the wokes, it is incomprehensible that one is in a body without having chosen it. Each consciousness should therefore be able to choose its body, whatever the technological cost. Unfortunately, we are faced with an obscurantist religion. We are far from Saint Thomas Aquinas who preached harmony between reason and faith. »
The essayist notably takes up the thesis of the professor of the University of South Dakota, Joseph Bottum. According to him, the collapse of Protestantism in the United States has led to a resurgence of the “social gospel” movement. The wokes would only be post-Protestants who would have recovered these themes by removing the figure of God.
“We have substituted racism, virilism or white privilege for original sin. Unfortunately, unlike Protestantism, in this new religion, there is no longer any possible redemption. No forgiveness. We are white for eternity, and therefore a fisherman. »
The religion of the elites
It is surprising all the same that such a current of thought could have arisen in the universities, the place par excellence of rational thought. “I don’t really have an explanation for this, except that as early as the 1960s, activists transformed traditional faculties into Black Studies and in Women Studies, where research has clearly been ideologically driven. Maybe you have to be a nerd to believe such stupid things, said George Orwell. Christopher Lasch had clearly seen that by dint of being in front of algorithms, the elites lost all contact with reality. We saw it during the pandemic, where there were the real world workers who couldn’t stay at home and the elites who got delivered and continued to work on their computers. »
Wokism is, says Braunstein, becoming the religion of the elite. According to the American journalist Andrew Sullivan, “we all live on a campus” since from now on, the universities train all the elites of society. Hence the great popularity of wokism both at Disney and on Wall Street.
“This derealization of the world, which notably professes that the sexes no longer exist, is totally in line with GAFAM and their virtual world. Doesn’t the Metaverse promise us to travel where we want, to meet whoever we want when we want and, why not, to change sex or race with a simple click? Wokism also goes in the direction of transhumanism and the idea that one could have a perfect body and even download one’s consciousness. It is life on the Internet that continues in reality. »
“A breeding ground of inculture”
More fundamentally, Judge Braunstein, this new form of religious thought benefits from the collapse of the school. “All of this is proliferating on a huge uncultivated soil. In recent years, in France, almost all general knowledge tests considered to be discriminating have been abolished. To reduce Colbert to the Black Code, one must know nothing of this immense minister. Similarly, to reduce Voltaire to racism, you must not have read him. »
Jean-François Braunstein is far from optimistic. “Unfortunately, when one is under the sway of a belief, one cannot be convinced. We are inaccessible to reasoning. This is very bad news. The professor who has just left the university worries above all for the younger generations on whom this suffocating morality is imposed. “Either they will succumb and repeat the dominant discourse, or they will practice doublespeak. In either case, it will not favor free and original individuals. »