Inverted Totems: On the Significance of “Woke” in the Culture Wars

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Editor and Author,

The evaluated paper is an interesting work that analyzes woke culture
from the perspective of an inverted totem. It is a profoundly original
contribution that dives into the Durkheimian totem terminology to extend
it through the analysis of the concepts of anti-totem and inverted
totem. In fact, the thesis of the paper focuses on analyzing woke
culture as this third type of totem. As the author points out: "woke is
an inverted totem, a symbol of a group that is constituted by the
totem's representation of all the values and beliefs that are offensive
to the group". That group that feels offended by woke's beliefs, values
and social positions is none other, for the author, than the right wing
of American politics, represented by broad sectors of the Republican party.

Beyond the thesis of the paper, we find it interesting to highlight the
author's effort to make a genealogy of the term woke, according to its
use in public discourse. We understand that it is a risky decision,
since the theorical sources on which to articulate his discourse will be
weaker than others that could be accessed using another logic of
analysis, but we believe that it is very positive to approach social
reality from social action, and this is always discursive.

In short, we consider that the text we have in our hands is a
contribution to the analysis of both the woke culture and the culture
wars, and we recommend its publication with minor revision.

This minor revision should be articulated around two lines of action:

-The first, we advise the author to reinforce his analysis of totemism
with classical contributions such as those of Levi-Strauss. In addition
to the author's use of the Durkheimian perspective, it would be
interesting if he could refer to other important studies that have
approached totemism.

-Secondly, throughout the text we find blank spaces between words and
some quotation marks missing at the beginning of quotations. We request
the author to make a deep revision of the text in this sense to correct
all these errors.

We again congratulate the author,

Best wishes,

Author Response

Dear Reviewer One,

I truly appreciate your time in reading over my submission to Religions, as well as your endorsement of the piece. I am glad to see—in your summary comments on the article—that (based on your accurate articulation of my claims) I have successfully communicated my thesis. What’s more, I am especially grateful for your suggestions regarding the inclusion of additional past theorizing of totems (e.g., that of Lévi-Strauss). 

The main focus of this article is the exploration of “woke” as it is used in the contemporary American culture wars, and as such, I spend the bulk of the paper mapping out the various concrete uses of the term and laying out what I consider false-starts in terms of popular explanations of the term (there is almost no relevant scholarly work on the issue as yet). Because of the paper’s empirical focus on this particular cultural phenomenon, there is less room for the theoretical elaboration of my “totemic typology,” especially the concept of the inverted totem. However, I have already begun a second paper whose focus is the theoretical elaboration of this typology, and in this case, the empirical examples will be illustrative rather than the central element. All that to say that in this theoretical sequel, I will have far more occasion to discuss previous theorizing on totemism. Even so, on reflecting on your suggestion, I agree that the present paper can benefit from a bit more of this elaboration, so I have included several new paragraphs in the introduction where I bring in more of this pertinent discussion, including pertinent contributions by the likes of E.B. Taylor, Lévi-Strauss, and Peter Worsley. I am convinced that this addition has made the paper stronger, and for that I am immensely grateful.

Also, I appreciate your calling out some of the typographical issues in the piece. I have tended to those, as well.

Thank you for helping make my article the best it can be.

-The Author

Reviewer 2 Report

"This work offers an original and novel look at a central problema of our time. It is a reflection situated in the contexto of cultural struggles in which the woke culture has become a symbolic current tha influences wide sectors of western and planetary life. The text is read with great attention due to a solid and rich argumentation. This research is of great value because it brings up to date the situation of cultural struggles with respect to social demands of the present. The author’s Audacity is concretized in the notion of inverted totem with which he tries to explain the role of the woke culture today. Based on Durkheim’s sociology, he sees in it a diffuse, uncertain reality, inprocess of change and with an uncertain course. The experience of unrecognized social rights constitutes the basis if a community in which there is a room for different sensibilties called upon to become aware of their social weakness. This concept deserves special attention because it can offer an analytical tool that is currently lacking in theoretical development.

In any case, and assuming the validity of the work in its present form,  future developments of the text could incorporate two avenues of research. The first would be its Dynamic dimensión. To what extent can it be considered that the lack of definition of this community responds to an initial moment of something that wants to grow and expand. It can be analyzed if this process shows the condition of inverted totem with provisional carácter but later on it can become something different. Secondly, it would be of great interest to study the woke culture in other contexts or civilizations in which the cultural struggles referred to autonomous consciousness is not centered in the code of the secular/religión, as it occours in the west. China, Iran, Russia, among others, possibly offer different visions of what  woke culture implies".

Author Response

Dear Reviewer Two,

I truly appreciate your time in reading over my submission to Religions, as well as your endorsement of the piece. I am especially grateful for your suggestions as to further research based on the concept of inverted totems. As a matter of fact, I have begun working on a more theoretical paper in which I elaborate the concept more fully (the present submission is focussed on the empirical phenomena of the use of “woke” within the contemporary American culture wars, which is why the bulk of the piece is dedicated to mapping out the term, its use, and the ways in which different thinkers have attempted to explain it). Your suggestion as to considering the dynamic potential of inverted totems is an idea I am giving serious thought to, and I love the recommendation of looking at the idea cross-culturally. In fact, based on your suggestions, while the bulk of this second article will focus on a more thoroughgoing development of the concept (and the typology more generally), I am planning to draw empirical examples from as broad an array of cultures as I can.

Thank You,

-The Author

Reviewer 3 Report

This author puts forward an interesting claim: that woke serves not as a totem (symbol of a people) or anti-totem (symbol for a people of another people), but an inverted totem. I appreciate what they are trying to do. Ultimately, however, it is my suggestion that it be reconsidered after significant revisions. I have three reasons for this: (1) generally speaking, the author needs more engagement with academic literature; (2) specifically, the author needs to contextualize the argument alongside woke as “dog-whistle” politics; and (3) the piece needs to be far more clear about what an inverted totem is.

 

Let me begin with greater scholarly engagement. The author has numerous citations, but many (I would say most) are simply citations for the public record. They are also citing journalists. While this is not necessarily wrong, it doesn’t make an academic argument. For instance: can they talk more about what scholars say regarding totems and anti-totems? On p. 2 they neglect to even offer a citation for what an anti-totem is, though they say “subsequent scholars have formulated the idea of an anti-totem,” yet they don’t cite any scholars. This is addressed slightly on p. 7 (i.e. when they discuss O'Brien), but I would like more capacious discussion and earlier on. The author also cites evidence that woke is a religion, but at least one of their extensive examples (i.e. John McWhorter) is not a trained sociologist, nor a religious studies scholar, but a linguist (pp. 5-6). Ultimately, much of the argument seems premised upon what conservatives and/or journalists think about woke as a religion. While this can be supplementary evidence, the author is treating it as sufficient. I believe more is necessary. If the author wants to claim that this topic is so new that there is no corollary, which they may want to do, then they should say it. Presently (without acknowledging this dearth of scholarship), the reader is left not knowing whether the literature is out there but not presented, or not out there.

 

My second point is perhaps more difficult to deal with. When the author is working to define how woke works, they neglect the long history of racist dog-whistle politics. (They do note that woke comes from the Black American experience, but this is treated more as a footnote than a genuine explanation of why the Right has latched onto it with such fervor). I make notes to this effect on pp. 4-6 and 8. This seems to me a very strong, if not stronger, way of framing how woke works in the modern Right. The Willie Horton ad in the 1988 presidential election, for instance, is an example of how coded words can be used to denote race in ways that tap into racially conservative Americans’ worldviews. Given the importance of racial dog-whistle politics in Trumpism, this seems important for the author to deal with. The author could look to Drakulich et al. (2020), Tilley (2020), or numerous others that would help situate the modern GOP in relation to racial messaging.

 

Lastly, I think the author needs to be much more explicit, much more quickly, regarding what inverted totems are. They get there (and use some helpful literature) with a discussion on p. 8 of Christians v. the non-Christian world. I think they need to do this early and often. I would advise them to drop or severely truncate the early part of the paper (i.e. the public record) and much more clearly, much more quickly, say what an inverted totem is. An inverted totem is a catch-all that helps a group identify what it is not, and thereby helps define the group. This makes sense. But I think the author would also want to defend against the argument that woke isn’t as unique as they claim. For instance, doesn’t the epithet “Red” or “Communist” work the same way as woke today? I would say yes (as the author says, many who are called woke would likely not agree with that characterization (p. 9), just like people who were called Reds in the 1950s). If we accept that Red is also an inverted totem, then the author would benefit from examining what makes woke different and/or the same. Regardless of the conclusion they draw, this would strengthen the argument.

 

Aside from these points, there are a couple small things I would advise fixing. These are, in no particular order: (1) grammar (e.g. redundant “the” on p. 1, line 5; semi-colon needed p. 2, line 17; systematic need to add opening quotation marks throughout; needed É accent in Emile, p. 2, para. 3, line 1); (2) it is Jamelle, not James Bouie (p. 9).

 

Again, I think the author has something to say here. I like the notion of inverted totems. But the piece needs to be far more systematic in its explanation, engage with more literature, and make its argument far more quickly and succinctly. I think there is something there, but I cannot recommend publication in its present form.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer Three,

I truly appreciate your time in reading and commenting on my submission to Religions. I am in the marvelously challenging position of having four reviewers for this piece, each with their own ideas on what the article should be, not all of which cohere when taken together. In this case, let me say that the major issue I see at the heart of much of your critique can be resolved by making the emphasis of my paper more explicit. 

When I set out to write this piece, it was with the deliberate intention of commenting on the use of woke in the context of the contemporary American culture wars. I chose to approach the topic through the prism of cultural sociology, which meant that methodologically, my argument would be based on empirical data drawn from public discourse (as this is in part what constitutes and expresses culture). And as I hope to have shown, the use of the term woke is not only ubiquitous, but incoherent and contradictory. Without such fulsome citation of the public record, I’m not convinced that I could do justice to the concept’s Byzantine usage or the cultural confusion about the term. The notion of inverted totems only occurred to me after puzzling over all that discourse data, when it appeared to be a better explanation than the others being put forward in the public sphere (there is a dearth of relevant scholarship, here, and I take your point about making that explicit, which I have done in the introduction of the revised text).

The alternative emphasis for this paper would be to come at the issues I raise “from the other direction,” namely, to make this a theoretical paper based on an elaboration of my typology of totemism with special emphasis on the concept of inverted totems. Your suggestions collectively strike me as leaning toward this alternative framing of the paper (e.g., “the piece needs to be far more systematic in its explanation, engage with more literature, and make its argument far more quickly and succinctly” and “I would advise them to drop or severely truncate the early part of the paper (i.e. the public record) and much more clearly, much more quickly, say what an inverted totem is”). And of course, these suggestions amount to what I take to be a different paper. That said, so compelling is your critique that I have already begun such a paper, one that focuses on the elaboration of this totemic typology, one where I have room to delve far more deeply into the scholarly literature around totemism (again, there is very little social-scientific scholarship on the idea of anti-totems) and where I can position empirical data in a more ancillary, illustrative role. 

So, for example, when you comment that the paper’s citations are “simply” of the public record, you’re absolutely correct, but it is the public record that is at the heart of what I’m studying. And the same goes for the citations of relevant non-social scientists (like McWhorter, whose Woke Racism book garnered such wide-spread cultural attention that he made appearances on popular television programs, including The Colbert Report, The View, and Real Time with Bill Maher to discuss it—and this in addition to the articles he published in a great many of the most widely read periodicals in the country). These are all part of the public record, part of the circulating meaning of woke in contemporary American discourse, and these are what my methodology steers me toward.

Regarding your point about framing woke as part of dog-whistle politics, I agree that this is related to some of the use of woke, but ultimately, this is one of the sorts of explanation I’m arguing against. My argument would be that racism is insufficient. I try to show that this framing would be reductive in the sense that it simply doesn’t fully capture the term as it is used so variously in the public sphere (for example, is McWhorter using it in this way? Obama?). I add a couple lines to this effect toward the end of section 5.

Regarding your point that I would do well to “defend against the argument that woke isn’t as unique as [I] claim,” I certainly don’t mean to suggest that it is somehow unique. I suspect it’s less common than traditional- and anti-totems, but I hope in my other paper—one that is focused not on woke, but on inverted totems—to adduce numerous examples (“Red” and “Communist” are great points of investigation).

With all that said, I have taken to heart each of your comments and have written a number of new paragraphs within the introduction (and a few scattered lines throughout) so as to fill out more of the scholarly discussion of totemism (for example, I have added what I believe to be illuminating commentary on totemism by E.B. Taylor, Lévi-Strauss, and Peter Worsley). I think that has made the paper stronger. And just to reiterate, there is not much for me to disagree with in your review; I simply believe that you are oriented toward a paper focussed on a theoretical exposition of inverted totemism, whereas the present paper—as I conceive it—is oriented toward an analysis of woke within the contemporary American culture wars. 

(And I am grateful for the handful of “small things” you point out at the end of your critique, things that I don’t take to be small at all! I don’t know how many times I’ve scanned that line with the redundant “the” without seeing it. I think I was able to correct everything you listed.)

Thank you for helping make my article the best it can be, and for insights that I will carry over to my theoretical elaboration of inverted totems.

-The Author

Reviewer 4 Report

Your essay is clear, provocative, timely, and, as an argument, generally admirably  balanced. Although I am persuaded that Carl Schmitt is more illuminating  on the polemical use of labels, your use of Durkheim is creative and invites reflection. The label of  "deplorables"seems to have been used with similar inverted totemistic intent, but did not catch on like "woke" did.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer Four,

I truly appreciate your time in reading over my submission to Religions, as well as your endorsement of the piece. I will also note that I agree with your affirmation of Carl Schmitt as providing a helpful framework for thinking about the polemical use of labels. Our contemporary American political scene (not to mention elsewhere across the globe) seems in many ways tailor made for Schmitt’s analysis of the ways in which collectivities distinguish themselves “us/friend” and “them/enemy.” My effort, of course, was to provide a novel framing of “woke” in the context of the culture wars, a framework that helps explain certain features of its use that are (to my mind) often missed, and a framework of the type that simply isn’t being considered—either in the public sphere or scholarly literature. In terms of your thoughts on "deplorables," which then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton labeled "half" of candidate Donald Trump's supporters, my initial response is that this might be better fitted (in the totemic typology I develop) to the anti-totem category, as it selects a finite group whose values are inimical to Clinton and her supporters (as opposed to everyone who lies outside the Clinton camp). Perhaps it is more akin to the example I offer in my article of the LGBTQ+ collectivity as viewed by certain religious fundamentalists? 

Thank You,

-The Author

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The author has sent in a revised version of their manuscript “Inverted Totems: On the Significance of ‘Woke’ in the Culture Wars,” along with a letter indicating the changes they have made in response to my previous review. I have read over both carefully. It is my professional opinion that, while the author is generous in their willingness to engage in some points, that this article still does not merit publication.

I do not make this determination lightly, and want to lay out my reasoning below. I also want to say that if the editors believe this piece is worthy of publication, they may by all means disregard my advice. While I am sympathetic to the author’s position, I cannot in good conscience sign off on publication.

To begin, I want to indicate where I think the author has made some good improvements. I like the addition of citations on pp. 2-3 (e.g. E.B. Taylor, Lévi-Strauss, and Worsley). These strike me as quite helpful, and respond to my initial criticism that the piece did not engage the scholarly literature as deeply as it should. I also like some of the smaller changes, including contextualizing McWhorter as a linguist and American Studies scholar, as well as smaller grammatical fixes.

With that said, however, I must reiterate that this article is not significantly updated enough to change my previous opinion. I would be willing to concede some of these points (e.g. I do not think the present gesture toward racism and woke-ness is enough, but within the text it could be justifiable). The problem is that the author still does not engage the scholarly literature. They admit as much in their response. Their point—and one that I take seriously—is that they are attempting to outline how woke works in discourse, rather than laying out a detailed typology. They say that they are at work on such a paper. They seem to distinguish between analyzing rhetoric and producing a full-fledged sociological typology.

I must admit, I am not convinced that this distinction is helpful. The author could easily analyze woke within discourse while at the same time providing a theoretically useful (and robust) typology for future scholarship. In fact, they say they are doing this in another paper. In my opinion, the attempt to divorce analysis from theory-building results in this paper being non-scholarly. The way the manuscript is currently written and argued, it strikes me as, at best, a chapter in a collected volume; at worst, possibly a think-piece in a magazine of opinion (e.g. The New Yorker). It is well-written, and has interesting ideas at work; but it does not rise to the level of scholarship that should be appearing in peer-reviewed journals. This is, and should be, a high bar.

I want to reiterate: the argument is not bad, it is merely incomplete. The distressing part is that the author not only acknowledges it, but embraces it. Based upon their response letter, the author’s other paper—the theoretical argument—seems far better suited to publication in a peer-reviewed outlet. I would love to read that one! But the present piece is not theoretically complex and, despite the changes (and here again the author admits this point), the second version of the manuscript still does not engage the literature (even to illustrate a gap in our current understanding). The author provides edits at the margins, when I believe a more wholesale change would be necessary.

As I close, I want to again say: I know this is not welcome news. I have been on the receiving end of unfavorable reviews, and it is never fun. My goal here is not to be cruel—far from it—but to be helpful and honest. It is my honest opinion that this piece is well-written, but overall does not rise to the level of peer-reviewed scholarship. The subsequent piece that the author produces would be a different story, and may well be worthy of significant acclaim. But I can only review what is on the page before me.

Should the journal editors decide to go forward with publication, that is their prerogative. I wish the author luck in this and their future endeavors!

Author Response

I have carefully read through Reviewer Three's comments based on my revised submission, and I have responded to what I believe is their central concern, namely: "The problem is that the author still does not engage the scholarly literature." To that end, I have added a robust literature review in the introduction. While there is not a great deal of scholarly work published on the concept of woke, I nevertheless cite and categorize some 16 additional academic publications relating to the topic. I then point out that this scholarly work does not really add anything germane to the purpose of the paper (i.e., to explain the phenomenon of woke in the context of the culture wars). (I also inserted a 17th citation later in the piece that addresses Reviewer Three's previous comment regarding woke being a dog whistle.) In addition, I add that what I propose to do in this article is examine the empirical evidence—to conduct a cultural analysis of the use of woke in contemporary discourse—in order to come to an entirely new understanding of this social phenomenon. In other words, what I am doing represents a new approach to the issue, which is why there is such silence within the scholarly literature.

Regarding the concept of totemism, the reviewer notes that they "like the addition of citations on pp. 2-3 (e.g. E.B. Taylor, Lévi-Strauss, and Worsley). These strike me as quite helpful, and respond to my initial criticism that the piece did not engage the scholarly literature as deeply as it should." I will only add that, as I state in the paper, "it is not my intention here to establish a new conception of totemic religion. Rather, I will put forward a heuristic built upon some of the ways in which totemism has been framed by social scientists." In other words, while I engage with the social-scientific literature on totemism, it is not my intention that this article be an anthropological study of totemism; rather, it is meant to explain the phenomenon of woke in the context of the culture wars with the aid of a novel heuristic based on the idea of totemism.

Once again, I would like to express my gratitude for the careful consideration that Reviewer Three has given my submission. Along with the comments of the other reviewers, their comments have rendered this a much stronger paper, and for that I am grateful.