Over at Commonweal, George Scialabba reviews Musa al-Gharbi’s We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite. It’s a largely negative review. But what struck me the most was Scialabba’s final paragraphs:
I don’t mean to dismiss We Have Never Been Woke. Al-Gharbi is obviously intelligent and energetic; he has gathered a lot of interesting data, organized it well, and written it up clearly and forcefully, except for occasional sentences like this one: “Meanwhile, heightened demographic inclusion has been accompanied by a growing homogenization of identity, and increased parochialism against divergent perspectives (including and especially with respect to minority group members who reject institutionally dominant narratives on identity issues).” Such sentences are apparently considered evidence of intellectual heft by tenure committees, which are a necessary rite of passage for young symbolic capitalists like al-Gharbi.
For what it’s worth, I hope he gets tenure, and sooner rather than later. Because the sooner he gets tenure, the sooner he can drop the jargon and instead employ vivid examples, colorful anecdotes, and direct, pungent language, all of which are frowned on by the gatekeepers of every social science. I strongly suspect that there is a social critic in al-Gharbi struggling to break free of the sociologist. If so, I wish him Godspeed.
Read the entire review here.
