We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, by Musa al-Gharbi. Princeton University Press, 2024. 432 pages. $35.00. ISBN 978-069123260

Authors

• Justin Sprague, West Chester UniversityFollow

Document Type

Review

Abstract

A scholar of women and gender studies, Justin Sprague reviews Musa al-Gharbi’s We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite. Focusing on four “Great Awokenings”—the Great Depression, the introduction of the GI Bill and ensuing counterculture movements of the 1960s, the financial precarity of the 1980s Reagan era, and the 2008 financial crisis and ensuing Occupy Wall Street movement—We Have Never Been Woke highlights the cyclical nature of the ideological/capitalist status quo and peels back the shiny veneer of politically “woke” and ideologically altruistic professionals to reveal how this group upholds a political economy that continually reinforces harmful systems of inequality.

Recommended Citation

Sprague, Justin (2026) "We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, by Musa al-Gharbi. Princeton University Press, 2024. 432 pages. $35.00. ISBN 978-069123260," Journal of Hate Studies: Vol. 19: Iss. 1, Article 16.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.64749/2169-7442.1276
Available at: https://repository.gonzaga.edu/jhs/vol19/iss1/16

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.