Cancel Culture

The term ‘cancelling’ in its current usage refers to the practice of, at one end, withdrawing approval, respect, relations with, or support for an individual, a group, or an institution, through excluding them from opportunities, situations and platforms, to, at the other end, eliminating references to, or representations of them. Such practices and debates about them have become prominent since the 2010s in connection with self-termed ‘social justice’ activism regarding issues of race, sexual identity, culture, history and politics particularly on social media and in academic institutions. Although the expressions ‘cancelling’ and ‘cancel culture’ are new, the practices of shunning, stigmatising and removing are very old and often recur in periods of cultural revolution and ideological activism. Premodern examples include the ancient Athenian practice of ostracism, an annual vote on whether and if so who to punish for ‘social offences’ by banishing them from the city; and the medieval practice of charivari: mocking, shaming, shunning or excluding Jews, lepers, adulterers, the illegitimate and the mentally handicapped. In modern and recent times ‘cancelling’ featured in the reformation period through the decanonisation of parts of scripture, excommunication, and the anathematization of ‘heretics: pronouncing them to be accursed. More recently the Soviet and Maoist counter- and cultural-revolutionary practices of shaming, revoking honours, and removing individuals from positions in education, government, and media, and removing their names and images from official document and photographs are vivid examples of ‘cancel culture’. The current debate around ‘cancelling’ addresses issues of civic responsibility, freedom of speech, privilege and power, reasonable disagreement, and toleration. While cancelling has been criticized from both left and right the main concern about it comes from traditional liberals based on J.S. Mill’s On Liberty (1859).