PhronesisGenuine social justice practice involves actual behavior change, material support for affected communities, ongoing learning, and tolerance for discomfort. Performative wokeness is a wrong attractor W_perform in which the social justice framework is deployed as identity performance and moral status signaling rather than material practice — the signal substitutes for the action, and the performance of allyship displaces actual allyship.
We apply the Displacement Framework to formalize performative wokeness. The integrated social justice practice ground state S0_practice is defined as ongoing behavioral change, material action, and learning from affected communities, following Kendi's antiracism as continuous practice rather than achieved status. W_perform is maintained through the identity-substitution mechanism (genuine practice, which requires material cost and behavioral change, is replaced by identity, which provides moral status at lower cost — Coates on self-congratulatory liberal identity as substitute for structural change) and the outrage substitution loop (social injustice observed → performative outrage expressed online → social reward received → social injustice unchanged → new outrage opportunity).
Nine formal propositions cover: S0_practice as integrated practice (P1), W_perform as virtue-signal wrong attractor (P2), the identity-substitution mechanism (P3), the outrage substitution loop (P4), call-out culture as in-group policing with Ross's calling-in alternative (P5), organizational performative wokeness — corporate diversity statements and DEI as brand positioning (P6), the affected community's perspective on performative allyship (P7), cumulative Phi_perform across practice, relational, political, and identity domains (P8), and return paths including Kendi's practice orientation, material investment, and Ross's calling-in framework (P9).