Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, December 11, 2024
On 11 December 2024, a study afternoon dedicated to the work of Antonio Malo (PUSC, Rome) Victims and oppressors took place with the participation of Benedetto Ippolito (PUSC Rome, University of Rome Three), from the Faculty of Philosophy, together with his colleague Luis Romera (PUSC, Rome), and Giulio Maspero (PUSC, Rome) and Ilaria Vigorelli (PUSC, Rome). Antonio Malo responded to comments and questions from colleagues and PhD students present at the debate.
To this day, it seems that the ideology of “woke” or “awakening” has established itself in our time as a pseudo-religion. Its success, however, is not only justified by the forms of oppression that have left their mark on individuals, groups and communities throughout history, or the struggle for greater social justice. According to Malo’s analysis, the woke culture is the result of a slow ideological gestation, combined with a pervasive media support, which has used in its favor the dynamics of globalization. It has its roots in the philosophical visions of Hegel, Marx and Gramsci. The fall of Marxism marked an evolution of Marxian thought and the beginning of the new millennium is witness to a post-Marxian ideological evolution that has come to critique every form of power. The result is the questioning of all components of society, understood according to the logic of patriarchy and accused of being itself a cause of oppression.
The Woke culture has changed its connotations to the critical theory of Marxian root, but it has not changed its dialectical foundation. The pseudo-religious globalism that comes from it, has activated a mechanism of omnipervasive dialectic opposition that, in understanding social relations as intrinsically connoted as oppressive or victimized, active in the “privileged” an almost obsessive demand for admission of guilt.
This struggle, although rooted in real episodes of detestable violence, unleashes a victimhood with no way out and results deeply damaging to human dignity, the perception of identity and the relational health of the whole social structure. The woke culture does not seem to know forgiveness, but only processes of close opposition in which the request for freedom of individuals and groups appears self-referential and far from any relational good.
The philosophical discourse on the human being cannot today ignore the recovery of the category of personal identity, and to do this we must return to consider the implementation of freedom, always present in every cultural movement based on the claim. In the postmodern, however, freedom has been essentially understood, along the lines of Niccian heritage, as a will to power or as force. This prevents the content of the report from being determined teleologically. Otherwise trying to rethink freedom as an act would mean not only tapping into a spectrum of infinite possible determinations but exploring it as an increase in actuality, which is never fully accomplished if it is not placed in relation to relational goods. Moreover, an instance of freedom limited to power never reaches the relational goods.
It is worth asking, therefore, suggested Romera, where this instance of victimhood starts from and, above all, where it intends to arrive without the good of forgiveness. The same claim for freedom that is cajoled and at the same time victimizes, by which anthropological instance it is carried out? An impulse, an emotional reaction or a feeling? The problem is to understand from which instance of interiority of the person this demand for freedom is lived.
The last Habermas, which said that he did not have a sense of the religious, suggested to listen to the speeches of religious leaders, even if not all the contents respond to the shared public reason. This was because he himself was convinced that it could be useful for the social good. The problem, then, is also to start thinking again from the common good: remember that we are not only acting for legitimate personal gain but also for the collective good. Freedom is, therefore, not only self-affirmation but also openness to receive a gift that is delivered by living itself: this can only radically change the perspective, to think about the world and social dynamics in relational terms and not dialectical.
