Aly is one of the first commentators to try to hold in his mind two conflicting ideas: that cancel culture is bad and that its use is understandable. It’s a noble attempt to chart a path forward. But, as we’ll see, Aly is only half right. When it comes to cancel culture, things are not as bad as they seem.
That’s because, first, ‘cancel culture’ is more perceived than real. To put it crudely, we fear being cancelled because pundits tell us to fear being cancelled. Second, the real change to public discourse is not an ideological movement of censorship but a material alteration to our public agora. That material shift is fundamentally democratic: never before has public disagreement been available to so many. And third, we should be glad of this change: the disagreement of the cancellers is not uncommonly censorious but precedented, legitimate and integral to the functioning of civic space. What is new is simply that public disagreement has been made available to voices never heard from before. ‘Cancel culture’ is not the death of the agora—it is its rebirth.
An analysis of cancel culture, in Meanjin.