The basic problem, as I see it, with Pluckrose, Lindsay, et al. on what they call "wokery" is that they mistakenly attribute all the power to Critical Theory itself, rather than market competition, changing legal frameworks, and the growth of networked communications.

This leads to a kind of cargo-cult argumentation style. Because they assume Critical Theory is the key mover, they position their readings of it first, imagining that it is CT itself that is effecting all of the social and cultural changes they decry.

But the question they evade is: why is CT suddenly so effectual right now? Where does a theorist who's been dead for 36 years obtain his uncanny power? How does this stuff get off the page and have real-world impact?

It's easy to find, say, a sociology paper on Google Scholar and mock its arguments and methodology; much harder to demonstrate that it's operant in any way beyond its narrow field.

This problem is compounded if you actually look at the figures for majors in the US and the UK. The vast bulk of undergraduates aren't reading Critical Theory at all during their degrees. They're studying Business, Marketing, and Economics, not Gender Studies.

Actually, it's far more likely that what's described as "wokeness" stems from another place entirely. Universities in a fully marketised system need to recruit students above all. They worry about institutional reputation, so they move in herds, copying their competitors.

They, as well as businesses and public sector bodies, worry about legal liability and compliance. So they put initiatives and training sessions in place to cover themselves and their employees, so they don't get accused of discrimination.

These initiatives may be informed in some way by Theory (superficially at least, at the level of discursive window dressing) but they're not being implemented because of Theory itself.

The whole "wokeness" critique is tilting at the windmills of Theory when it should be paying far more attention to policy documents, market dynamics, bureaucratic structures, and legal frameworks, especially around the issues of risk and liability.

Although that's perhaps less sexy (and harder in practice) than attributing everything to the sinister "hidden hand" of Foucault and his followers.