We need a new word for ‘woke’, says Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver says she has lost friends by voicing her political opinions

Credit: Jamie Lorriman

Lionel Shriver has appealed for an alternative to the word “woke”,saying that even she is sick of the term.

The author is an outspoken critic of what she has called “woke” ideology. But she admitted: “It has become horribly overused.”

“We needed a word for it and we found one,and I’m as tired of it as you are. There have been other people trying to coin something else,which we’d also get tired of,but they usually have more than one syllable so they don’t catch on,” she said during an appearance at the Hay Festival.

Shriver’s latest book,Mania,is about a society in which the “woke” fight against “cognitive discrimination”,decreeing that every person has the same level of intelligence. This means that qualifications and grades have been abolished,anyone can get into medical school,and airline pilots no longer have to take tests.

“I’m interested in the larger phenomenon of our vulnerability to being taken over - possessed - by a certain way of looking at things,a myopic obsession with a particular topic,” she said.

Explaining that she had lost friends by voicing her political opinions,Shriver decried “the political Left,who flounce out of the room” when faced with views that they find disagreeable.

“They believe it is not just a matter of disagreement,but a matter of good and evil.”

However,she added: “One of the things that is starting to happen during the woke and anti-woke debate is that the Right is starting to do the same thing - regarding the Left as fundamentally evil.”

Shriver said she was pleased that “the fad for transgenderism is starting to fall apart”. 

She also voiced support for the right to protest over Gaza,but said: “I personally would not be out there in support of Palestinians,much less Hamas. I believe we are subjecting Israel to far more moral scrutiny than any other country in the world.”

Shriver,who won the 2005 Orange Prize for We Need To Talk About Kevin,is now better known for her provocative opinions than her novels. Mania is her 17th book. 

She said: “I have ended up being dangerously prominent in this political period because it is a time when I am constantly being told what I can write about,what I can say,what words I can use.

“And if you tell me I can’t use a word,then I’m going to use it.”

She said: “I have been asked many times,‘Why haven’t you been cancelled yet?’ And I’m a little worried that maybe I’m not sufficiently important.”