Abstract
I argue that there is an emptiness to wokeness which remains as social awareness and does not translate to collective responsibility. Wokeness, like social justice movements, is an ongoing collective process which cannot focus on or remain with the individual. I use the example of white people in South Africa as a privileged group that cannot be woke, unless the social awareness translates into material and epistemic change. Wokeness that remains at the level of the individual, wokeness as the becoming aware of social issues only to the extent that it does not change one’s life, is empty. I argue that one cannot be woke while perpetuating and participating in systems of inequality, especially for white people in South Africa as a privileged group who have the resources for a response-ability. If wokeness is a mere speech act and if we try to be woke only to the extent that it does not change the structures of our lives, then wokeness is the mere branding of the individual. I build the argument for privileged groups to take their social awareness as only the first step towards collective responsibility and action. In this article, I argue that there is an emptiness to wokeness that remains as individual awareness and does not begin the work of restructuring society. The individualisation of social justice movements leads to an internalised empty individual wokeness, which does not change the societal structure towards equality. I use the example of white people in contemporary South Africa as a privileged group who could not be woke with the societal structure as it is. This example relates to the broader scheme of the limits to wokeness as an individual awareness and the co-option of wokeness or social justice as a brand, which does not have a relation to collective work within our liberal-capitalist milieu. My intention in this article is to refocus conversations about white identity, and awareness of social injustice, from the perspective of a privileged group, towards collective responsibility.