Regarding the origins of wokeism, recently I chanced upon the concept of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD), it also has a Wikipedia entry. Basically there are people who argue that general wokification of institutions is an internal development of some of the American elite's religion, via Unitarianism and then Unitarian Universalism, and the general "be nice, don't judge, don't harm" morality of Oprah with a deistic God you can occasionally call upon for some encouragement but doesn't demand much, just to be kind, there are many equally valid paths etc. This is of course not the same as the mandatory activism required by woke, not merely a lack of judging etc. But it is the basis for the willingness of simply nice decent people to obey such demands.
I would also consider post-WWII Boomer morality, incl John Lennon Imagine, etc, which doesn't seem all that influenced by the postmodern writers like Foucault or Derrida.
Another set of people point to a merger of a mutated American Civic Religion and German Guilt Pride (the phenomenon where Germans feel superior and proud of how well they have done the processing of the past, the Vergangenheitsbewältigung).
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Regarding the origins of wokeism, recently I chanced upon the concept of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD), it also has a Wikipedia entry. Basically there are people who argue that general wokification of institutions is an internal development of some of the American elite's religion, via Unitarianism and then Unitarian Universalism, and the general "be nice, don't judge, don't harm" morality of Oprah with a deistic God you can occasionally call upon for some encouragement but doesn't demand much, just to be kind, there are many equally valid paths etc. This is of course not the same as the mandatory activism required by woke, not merely a lack of judging etc. But it is the basis for the willingness of simply nice decent people to obey such demands.
I would also consider post-WWII Boomer morality, incl John Lennon Imagine, etc, which doesn't seem all that influenced by the postmodern writers like Foucault or Derrida.
Another set of people point to a merger of a mutated American Civic Religion and German Guilt Pride (the phenomenon where Germans feel superior and proud of how well they have done the processing of the past, the Vergangenheitsbewältigung).
I don't think there needs to be a single origin.
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