Zygmunt Bauman, Maxine Greene, and wide-awakeness in somnambulant times

The author considers the politics and public pedagogy of “anti-woke” backlash as a component of the cultural politics of U.S. fascism. Concerned about the threat posed by the somnambulance promoted by anti-woke politics to democracy and humanization, the author puts Bauman and Greene into conversation. In particular, Bauman's abiding concerns with moral sensitivity and Greene's notion of wide-awakeness are juxtaposed to the cultural politics of U.S. fascism, the “somnambulant form.” Writing from two different disciplinary vantage points, Bauman and Greene, both unapologetic in their engagements with literature and the arts as sources of sociological and philosophical insight and creative grist, sought to encourage the sociological imagination (Bauman) and the imagination as such (Greene) in the interests of heightening people's moral sensitivities. Critically, they help people see differently to remember that the world, as it is, could be different.