Waking up or Performing Wokeness? A Critical Examination of the Call of Conscience

The Oxford Dictionary defines conscience as “an inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior.” Freedom and human rights are inextricably linked to that inner voice of rightness and the choices we make that impact the globe, including Mother Earth and marginalized voices. In this panel, a group of women representing diverse faiths explore the complexity and implications of today’s “woke” culture, attuned to injustice and oppression in all its manifestations but missing the heed of the spiritual, the “awake” inner voice that speaks countless languages and comes from diverse faiths and religious beliefs. How do people of faith adopt, adapt, and critique contemporary discourses of wokeness? Panel themes include corporate “wokewashing,” debates around Muslim women’s agency in wearing headscarves, and the limits of sustainability discourse. Our panelists represent Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Jewish, and Goddess traditions.