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The "Cancel" Culture [1]
"Cultures"-4
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A misguided movement
Some people openly attack culture. They claim to want to "erase" it.
They proclaim the objective of their company, which they call "Cancel Culture" [2] [3] [4] .
The "Cancel Culture" movement was inspired by the concept of "deconstruction" [5] , a concept so relevant at its origin, but which, unfortunately, has been corrupted by extremist minds. A beautiful concept massacred by individuals probably unaware of their own cultural identity crisis. A minority of so-called "progressives", prisoners of a binary, simplistic way of thinking, dividing humans into "dominants" or "dominated".
A way of thinking full of contradictions and opposing injunctions that recalls that of those who, in the midst of May 68, transformed a beautiful cultural movement into almost neurotic acts of violence. Those who "threw the baby out with the bathwater," those who threw out the "sacred and authority," along with "authoritarianism." A way of "all-powerful thinking" similar to that of those who marked the turning point of the May 68 movement with the schizogenic slogan: "It is forbidden to Forbid." [6] or with the poorly digested motto of Rabelais [7] "fay ce que vouldras " (" do what you want ")! This is also what the followers of Cancel Culture look like, a few generations later.
An International out of touch
In too much of a hurry, they sincerely believe they are already "citizens of the world", but unfortunately of a world that is still too divided.
These "citizens of the world" seem to form an "international" of self-uprooted stateless people, similar to that of ancient ideologies which dreamed of "rootless universality" [8] .
They claim to be able to do without Cultures which, in their eyes, are too "rooted".
Do they not see, through their excesses, that their hatred of their own culture is akin to a self-hatred which, so heavy to bear, is "projected", like a hot potato, into hatred of any Other who does not see reality through their prism?
Victims?
While firmly opposing this uncontrolled hatred and its excesses, we maintain that one of its root causes is: collective Western suffering. A suffering that remains untreated, without any real "work." A collectively repressed guilt: how could a civilization that rightly considers itself one of the most advanced, have committed two of the least enlightened acts in the history of humanity: the Holocaust and Hiroshima? This "unfinished business," as shrinks would say, unconsciously haunts the descendants of the generation that lived through the Second World War. The vast majority of contemporaries of this war did not do the "work" that would have allowed them to transform the feeling of "guilt" into "responsibility" and not let what they can remain proud of be soiled. Too quickly, this generation "looked the other way," swept under the carpet these horrors that "we cannot see." She left her descendants with nothing but unspoken guilt that cannot be expressed.
There will be here, for those we must fight, a certain recognition of their status as victims. This does not exempt them from responsibility for what they are doing with their harm.
Before it's too late
It is time, before it is too late, to oppose a movement to protect Culture and its people, to resist that of "Cancel Culture".
Should the West interpret the November 2024 US presidential elections through the lens of fears about the disappearance of a culture and its people, rather than being distracted by the personalities and egos of leaders?
Protect Culture
Humans, even without realizing it, belong to one or more cultures. This is what can distinguish them from the rest of "Nature." This is what can allow them to "stop themselves," as Albert Camus would say. This is what can make them responsible "subjects" and not "objects" of their base instincts.
Criticizing the excesses of cancel culture doesn't prevent us from seeing a culture's imperfections. Culture is a human product, and therefore imperfect. But it is perfectible, and we cannot accept "throwing the baby out with the bathwater."
Are we seeing the emergence of a new "Pro-Woke-Anti-Woke" political divide, more acute and more essential than the old "Left-Right" divide, now devoid of substance? "Left-Right" or "Democrat-Republican" is no longer a relevant analytical framework. Left and Right are intertwined among both the Pro-Woke and the Anti-Woke. What will be the outcome of this new confrontation? The matter is under active deliberation.
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References
[1] The issue of "Cancel Culture" will be the subject of a separate series, exploring mechanisms common to several similar movements and theories, whether, for example, "wokeism" or "gender theory." I have followed, from the inside, the slow decline of the left since the 1980s, which became caviar left, then bobo, then woke, and now woke.
[2] Douglas Murray , “The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity,” Éditions du Toucan, 2020.
[3] Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay , “Cynical Theories: How Universities Undermine Social Justice and Corrupt Knowledge,” Artilleur Publishing, 2020.
[4] Mathieu Bock-Côté , ''The Empire of Political Correctness'', Éditions du Cerf, 2019
[5] Jacques Derrida , On Grammatology (1967), Éditions de Minuit. His rigorous, tolerant intellectual practice of dominant norms contrasts with his political and media application, his slide towards "cancellation" in the service of social issues by intolerant activists.
[6] Forbidden to forbid : In May 1968, I was one of the 12 elected officials who managed the Sorbonne, which was occupied by students. Every day I read the famous slogans of May 1968 on the walls (for example, "under the paving stones, the beach" or "there are acts that smooth over ambiguities"...). It was creative. When I read, one morning, "It is forbidden to forbid," I vaguely felt a turning point, a malaise. But I didn't yet have the tools to analyze this symptom of a collective French "knot" that is still relevant today, still not collectively "untied."
See also the upcoming episode "Mai68" from the series [" MEYER "].
[7] François Rabelais , in Gargantua, 1534.
[8] Simone Weil (1909–1943), L'Enracinement , 1949 (posthumously). She emphasizes the need to have roots (historical, cultural, spiritual) to build authentically human values. She warns against the excesses of an abstract universalism.