Re: notes on cancel culture

[David Garcia]

Rather than disappearing entirely down the rabbit hole of definitions and 
interpretations, uses and misuses of 
the term “cancel culture” 

I wanted to risk returning to Garry Hall’s earlier cautionary remarks about my 
uncritical use of "terms and concepts like ‘argument’, 
‘careful judgement’, ‘knowledge’, ‘democracy’, ‘public’ as datum points in this 
way is itself a form of affective politics that 
‘“precedes debate, precedes argument, precedes speech”’? In which he suggested 
that that it "Might too, be a ‘decisionism’, 
“an acting out or performance of some prior act of identification”’ 

Gary reminds us of Chantal Mouffe’s questioning of what it is to be political, 
when its "a political decision always 
takes place in an "undecidable terrain” in which as Gary argues "social 
relations are not fixed or natural, but rather the product 
of hegemonic articulations: that is, of contingent yet temporary decisions 
involving power and conflict.” 

The question I want to ask is, what happens to politics if it no longer 
involves deciding on more or less valid contributions to public
knowledge ? Thats not a request for a narrow positivist empiricism or a wish to 
return to established epistemic hierarchies. It means 
instead establishing (in the words of digital sociologist Noortje Marres) "a 
central role in public life for experimental facts: 
statements whose truth value is unstable”. 

I think this takes us to spaces that include but go beyond the power question 
alone and the endless recursive loop of asking: but whose in 
charge? And the insistence that first of all we must choose a “side”. Come on 
Us or Them ? Whether this should be default or primary 
register of our political discourse in the face of complex existential problems 
is the position I wanted to question. 

   


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Re: notes on cancel culture

[A Sparkly Kat]

Germaine Greer and Julie Bindel both seem to have net worths of 1 million
USD, according to google. JK Rowling, who seemed to be the main subject of
the article that Maggie linked has a net worth of at least 650 million USD.
These people are not legally penalized for their views. They are not being
incarcerated or killed for being terfs.

You know who are getting incarcerated for walking

and killed

for being who they are?

On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 6:28 PM Jeffrey Fisher 
wrote:

> What is "the trans narrative"?
>
> jeff
>
>
>
> Sent from phone. Please pardon tipos and surreal autocorrect.
>
> > On Aug 14, 2020, at 6:16 PM, Maggie Lucas <
> bats.by.fireside.bri...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > It’s actually the “left” that is cancelling anyone dissenting with the
> trans narrative.
> > Margaret
> >
> >> On Aug 14, 2020, at 2:04 PM, Alice Yang 
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Are we really comparing “cancel culture” which is usually associated
> with bipoc and queer people raising red flags over violent behavior
> with...Nazis?
> >>
> >> People have talked about cancel culture as having “disastrous
> consequences”? Can someone provide an example of how exactly cancel culture
> has rivaled the state’s monopoly on violence or are we just going to sit
> here and use vague/coded language such as “populism” to reinforce racial
> capitalism? I thought net-time was a leftist mailing list?
> >>
> >> A
> > #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
> > #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
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>


-- 
A
www.alicesparklykat.com
IG/Twitter: @alicesparklykat 
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Re: notes on cancel culture

[Jeffrey Fisher]

What is "the trans narrative"?

jeff



Sent from phone. Please pardon tipos and surreal autocorrect. 

> On Aug 14, 2020, at 6:16 PM, Maggie Lucas  
> wrote:
> 
> It’s actually the “left” that is cancelling anyone dissenting with the trans 
> narrative.
> Margaret 
> 
>> On Aug 14, 2020, at 2:04 PM, Alice Yang  wrote:
>> 
>> Are we really comparing “cancel culture” which is usually associated with 
>> bipoc and queer people raising red flags over violent behavior with...Nazis? 
>> 
>> People have talked about cancel culture as having “disastrous consequences”? 
>> Can someone provide an example of how exactly cancel culture has rivaled the 
>> state’s monopoly on violence or are we just going to sit here and use 
>> vague/coded language such as “populism” to reinforce racial capitalism? I 
>> thought net-time was a leftist mailing list?
>> 
>> A
> #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
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Re: notes on cancel culture

[Maggie Lucas]

It’s actually the “left” that is cancelling anyone dissenting with the trans 
narrative.
Margaret 

> On Aug 14, 2020, at 2:04 PM, Alice Yang  wrote:
> 
> Are we really comparing “cancel culture” which is usually associated with 
> bipoc and queer people raising red flags over violent behavior with...Nazis? 
> 
> People have talked about cancel culture as having “disastrous consequences”? 
> Can someone provide an example of how exactly cancel culture has rivaled the 
> state’s monopoly on violence or are we just going to sit here and use 
> vague/coded language such as “populism” to reinforce racial capitalism? I 
> thought net-time was a leftist mailing list?
> 
> A
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Re: notes on cancel culture

[David Garcia]

The usual example from the UK is Germain Greer’s views on transgender issues 
prompting Cardiff University’s Women’s Society
to disinvite her from speaking. And the National Union of Students adopting a 
similar policy of ’no-platforming’ feminist writer Julie 
Bindel also for expressing views interpreted as transphobic. 

The term has now greatly expanded its reach and been adopted by a host of right 
wing commentators who feel aggrieved for being called 
out on any subject. Like "snow-flake” and "virtue signalling” and “political 
correctness” it has been added to the box of rhetorical weapons the 
right use to complain about, mock and otherwise attempt to shut down criticism.


On 14 Aug 2020, at 20:34, Alice Sparkly Kat  wrote:

> Can folks clarify what they mean by cancel culture and provide actual 
> examples? What are you talking about when you talk about cancel culture's 
> "chilling effects"? Are you talking about all white spaces that want to 
> awkwardly talk about race without having done any learning or work not know 
> what to say? Are you saying that celebrities with global influence such as 
> Shane Dawson would be more radical if we all gave them more support? Are you 
> talking about someone you know?
> 
> Last time I checked, it's not illegal to make problematic statements. It 
> doesn't get you incarcerated. It doesn't get you killed. Sometimes, public 
> figures with a lot of wealth and influence see their follower count go down 
> when they do something problematic. Are the people opposing cancel culture 
> saying that these public figures are entitled to support from people who 
> experience their statements as violent? When you are opposed to what you call 
> cancel culture, are you saying that people who speak out against what they 
> are experiencing as violence should not talk in the name of "discourse"? How 
> is that democratic?
> 
> On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 3:14 PM David Garcia 
>  wrote:
> Thanks Gary,
> 
> for critically pulling me up on an un-problemtized use of a variety of 
> liberal bromides. Particularly telling is your last point about the danger of 
> unwittingly putting myself at odds with the legitimate rage of oppressed 
> groups whose tactics have been pilloried by both liberals and the right under 
> the generalised rubric of "cancel culture". I am sorry Alice Yang you are 
> absolutely right I accept I was not paying enough attention to the context 
> and struggles within which term is used and mis-used. (including the Harpers 
> Magazine letter)
> 
> Best
> 
> David
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> David,
> 
> Thanks for your post on William Davies’s recent contributions to the London 
> Review of Books. Enjoyed it.
> 
> The mention of Carl Schmitt brings to mind another critic of liberalism, 
> Chantal Mouffe, and her philosophy of hegemony and antagonism, itself greatly 
> influenced by Schmitt’s account of the friend/enemy relation. For Mouffe, the 
> political is a decision that is always ‘taken in an undecidable terrain’. 
> This is because social relations are not fixed or natural, but rather the 
> product of hegemonic articulations: that is, of contingent yet temporary 
> decisions involving power and conflict. (Which has the advantage that these 
> hegemonic articulations can be disarticulated, transformed and rearticulated 
> as a result of struggle between opponents.)
> 
> Now, I realize this may seem a rather counter-intuitive question to ask - 
> particularly for readers of the London Review of Books! But I do worry, is 
> there a risk that using terms and concepts like ‘argument’, ‘careful 
> judgement’, ‘knowledge’, ‘democracy’, ‘public’ as datum points in this way is 
> itself a form of affective politics that ‘“precedes debate, precedes 
> argument, precedes speech”’? Might it, too, be a ‘decisionism’, “an acting 
> out or performance of some prior act of identification”’ - one in which the 
> question of what it is to be political, especially in relation to ‘cancel 
> culture’, is not taken in an undecidable terrain, but is rather decided in 
> advance of intellectual questioning?
> 
> Here’s a less subtle (and less philosophical) version of the concern that’s 
> troubling me and that I'm not expressing as well as I'd like: How do we as 
> ‘net critics’ avoid coming across - especially to certain of those 
> progressive or marginalized voices who may have found themselves associated 
> with cancel culture - as merely activist/artist/geek versions of the liberal 
> signatories to the Letter on Justice and Open Debate that appeared in 
> Harper’s Magazine at the beginning of July and that Geert also refers to in 
> his piece on cancel culture?
> 
> Cheers, Gary
> #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
> #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> #  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
> #  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.

Re: notes on cancel culture

[David Garcia]

Thanks Gary,

for critically pulling me up on an un-problemtized use of a variety of liberal 
bromides. Particularly telling is your last point about the danger of 
unwittingly putting myself at odds with the legitimate rage of oppressed groups 
whose tactics have been pilloried by both liberals and the right under the 
generalised rubric of "cancel culture". I am sorry Alice Yang you are 
absolutely right I accept I was not paying enough attention to the context and 
struggles within which term is used and mis-used. (including the Harpers 
Magazine letter)

Best

David






David,

Thanks for your post on William Davies’s recent contributions to the London 
Review of Books. Enjoyed it.

The mention of Carl Schmitt brings to mind another critic of liberalism, 
Chantal Mouffe, and her philosophy of hegemony and antagonism, itself greatly 
influenced by Schmitt’s account of the friend/enemy relation. For Mouffe, the 
political is a decision that is always ‘taken in an undecidable terrain’. This 
is because social relations are not fixed or natural, but rather the product of 
hegemonic articulations: that is, of contingent yet temporary decisions 
involving power and conflict. (Which has the advantage that these hegemonic 
articulations can be disarticulated, transformed and rearticulated as a result 
of struggle between opponents.)

Now, I realize this may seem a rather counter-intuitive question to ask - 
particularly for readers of the London Review of Books! But I do worry, is 
there a risk that using terms and concepts like ‘argument’, ‘careful 
judgement’, ‘knowledge’, ‘democracy’, ‘public’ as datum points in this way is 
itself a form of affective politics that ‘“precedes debate, precedes argument, 
precedes speech”’? Might it, too, be a ‘decisionism’, “an acting out or 
performance of some prior act of identification”’ - one in which the question 
of what it is to be political, especially in relation to ‘cancel culture’, is 
not taken in an undecidable terrain, but is rather decided in advance of 
intellectual questioning?

Here’s a less subtle (and less philosophical) version of the concern that’s 
troubling me and that I'm not expressing as well as I'd like: How do we as ‘net 
critics’ avoid coming across - especially to certain of those progressive or 
marginalized voices who may have found themselves associated with cancel 
culture - as merely activist/artist/geek versions of the liberal signatories to 
the Letter on Justice and Open Debate that appeared in Harper’s Magazine at the 
beginning of July and that Geert also refers to in his piece on cancel culture?

Cheers, Gary
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Re: notes on cancel culture

[Zach Pearl]

I feel compelled to wade in here. I’ve been a lurker on this mailing list since 
2011 but never quite felt the need to jump into a thread. 

I’m a queer person who has spent the last 15 years working in art, design and 
publishing—fields that hinge on freedom of expression—and I do not support 
cancel culture. 

There is good reason that Gary brought up the work of Chantal Mouffe and her 
nuanced concept of antagonism as it relates to the body politic. Her work 
reveals that there can be no true democracy without continual conflict, without 
sustained argument and the heteroglossia of diverse interests and perspectives 
competing in a shared space. The thrust of this is that no one perspective is 
ever considered sacred or untouchable. 

While I believe that systemic racism is real and braided with technocapitalism 
at nearly every level, and that queer and BIPOC people deserve much much better 
from governments and corporations, the “disastrous consequence” of cancel 
culture is that we abandon the notion of debate as a cornerstone of democracy.

Unfortunately, if we silence even one perspective, as misguided and uninformed 
as it may be (with the exception of hate speech [which has jurisdictional 
differences in scope and definition]) then we have already moved away from 
democracy at its core. 

There is also a real chilling effect that comes with cancel culture. 
Personally, I have known artists and authors that feel certain ideas are 
becoming too risky or radical to express in their creative practices, even when 
they come from a place of critical inquiry and research. Because the cancel 
culture axiom is either to embrace something or get rid of it, the spectrum of 
an idea's merit is reduced to a binary moral judgment that insipidly 
reinscribes the very same phallogocentrism I can only assume many of those in 
favour of cancel culture oppose. 

Nettime is a left-leaning mailing list precisely because debates about the 
merit of cancel culture can take place here. Anything else is antithetical to 
the democratic society that marginalized people seek to manifest every time 
they take to the streets.   

Z



> On Aug 14, 2020, at 1:04 PM, Alice Yang  wrote:
> 
> Are we really comparing “cancel culture” which is usually associated with 
> bipoc and queer people raising red flags over violent behavior with...Nazis? 
> 
> People have talked about cancel culture as having “disastrous consequences”? 
> Can someone provide an example of how exactly cancel culture has rivaled the 
> state’s monopoly on violence or are we just going to sit here and use 
> vague/coded language such as “populism” to reinforce racial capitalism? I 
> thought net-time was a leftist mailing list?
> 
> A
> 
>> On Aug 14, 2020, at 12:07 PM, Gary Hall  wrote:
>> 
>> David,
>> 
>> Thanks for your post on William Davies’s recent contributions to the London 
>> Review of Books. Enjoyed it.
>> 
>> The mention of Carl Schmitt brings to mind another critic of liberalism, 
>> Chantal Mouffe, and her philosophy of hegemony and antagonism, itself 
>> greatly influenced by Schmitt’s account of the friend/enemy relation. For 
>> Mouffe, the political is a decision that is always ‘taken in an undecidable 
>> terrain’. This is because social relations are not fixed or natural, but 
>> rather the product of hegemonic articulations: that is, of contingent yet 
>> temporary decisions involving power and conflict. (Which has the advantage 
>> that these hegemonic articulations can be disarticulated, transformed and 
>> rearticulated as a result of struggle between opponents.)
>> 
>> Now, I realize this may seem a rather counter-intuitive question to ask - 
>> particularly for readers of the London Review of Books! But I do worry, is 
>> there a risk that using terms and concepts like ‘argument’, ‘careful 
>> judgement’, ‘knowledge’, ‘democracy’, ‘public’ as datum points in this way 
>> is itself a form of affective politics that ‘“precedes debate, precedes 
>> argument, precedes speech”’? Might it, too, be a ‘decisionism’, “an acting 
>> out or performance of some prior act of identification”’ - one in which the 
>> question of what it is to be political, especially in relation to ‘cancel 
>> culture’, is not taken in an undecidable terrain, but is rather decided in 
>> advance of intellectual questioning?
>> 
>> Here’s a less subtle (and less philosophical) version of the concern that’s 
>> troubling me and that I'm not expressing as well as I'd like: How do we as 
>> ‘net critics’ avoid coming across - especially to certain of those 
>> progressive or marginalized voices who may have found themselves associated 
>> with cancel culture - as merely activist/artist/geek versions of the liberal 
>> signatories to the Letter on Justice and Open Debate that appeared in 
>> Harper’s Magazine at the beginning of July and that Geert also refers to in 
>> his piece on cancel culture?
>> 
>> Cheers, Gary
>> 
>> 
>>> On 14/08/2020 13:24, David Garcia wrote:

Re: notes on cancel culture

[tbyfield]

Apparently so...
On Aug 14, 2020, 1:05 PM -0400, Alice Yang , wrote:
> Are we really comparing “cancel culture” which is usually associated with 
> bipoc and queer people raising red flags over violent behavior with...Nazis?

#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

Re: notes on cancel culture

[Alice Yang]

Are we really comparing “cancel culture” which is usually associated with bipoc 
and queer people raising red flags over violent behavior with...Nazis? 

People have talked about cancel culture as having “disastrous consequences”? 
Can someone provide an example of how exactly cancel culture has rivaled the 
state’s monopoly on violence or are we just going to sit here and use 
vague/coded language such as “populism” to reinforce racial capitalism? I 
thought net-time was a leftist mailing list?

A

> On Aug 14, 2020, at 12:07 PM, Gary Hall  wrote:
> 
> David,
> 
> Thanks for your post on William Davies’s recent contributions to the London 
> Review of Books. Enjoyed it.
> 
> The mention of Carl Schmitt brings to mind another critic of liberalism, 
> Chantal Mouffe, and her philosophy of hegemony and antagonism, itself greatly 
> influenced by Schmitt’s account of the friend/enemy relation. For Mouffe, the 
> political is a decision that is always ‘taken in an undecidable terrain’. 
> This is because social relations are not fixed or natural, but rather the 
> product of hegemonic articulations: that is, of contingent yet temporary 
> decisions involving power and conflict. (Which has the advantage that these 
> hegemonic articulations can be disarticulated, transformed and rearticulated 
> as a result of struggle between opponents.)
> 
> Now, I realize this may seem a rather counter-intuitive question to ask - 
> particularly for readers of the London Review of Books! But I do worry, is 
> there a risk that using terms and concepts like ‘argument’, ‘careful 
> judgement’, ‘knowledge’, ‘democracy’, ‘public’ as datum points in this way is 
> itself a form of affective politics that ‘“precedes debate, precedes 
> argument, precedes speech”’? Might it, too, be a ‘decisionism’, “an acting 
> out or performance of some prior act of identification”’ - one in which the 
> question of what it is to be political, especially in relation to ‘cancel 
> culture’, is not taken in an undecidable terrain, but is rather decided in 
> advance of intellectual questioning?
> 
> Here’s a less subtle (and less philosophical) version of the concern that’s 
> troubling me and that I'm not expressing as well as I'd like: How do we as 
> ‘net critics’ avoid coming across - especially to certain of those 
> progressive or marginalized voices who may have found themselves associated 
> with cancel culture - as merely activist/artist/geek versions of the liberal 
> signatories to the Letter on Justice and Open Debate that appeared in 
> Harper’s Magazine at the beginning of July and that Geert also refers to in 
> his piece on cancel culture?
> 
> Cheers, Gary
> 
> 
>> On 14/08/2020 13:24, David Garcia wrote:
>> The whole world Cancel culture gets an even more sinister twist than usual 
>> when put through the filter
>> of the title of a recent article by William Davies entitled “Who am I 
>> Prepared to Kill? In which he explores aspects
>> of Nazi Jurist and philosopher Carl Schmitt influential reduction of 
>> politics down to the base distinction between
>> friend and enemy and ultimately realised in the grim question "who am I 
>> prepared to kill and who am i prepared to
>> die for?”. Some see this distinction as the foundation of populism.
>> 
>> In a podcast (link below) Davies further develops this theme describing a 
>> politics that is worse than simple
>> ‘factionalism’ which he characterises in terms of extreme forms of cultural 
>> identification where existential identification becomes
>> the very foundation of political difference. "And this political difference 
>> is expressed through an acting out or performance
>> of some prior act of identification”.
>> 
>> An affective politics of this kind that "precedes debate, precedes argument, 
>> precedes speech” In this extreme Schmittian landscape
>> cancel culture is the only logical outcome. In this world in which politics 
>> has no space left for the epistemic, in place of argument we are
>> reduced to the decisionism of picking a side. Not much space left for the 
>> careful judgement between rival truth claims.
>> 
>> Given this reality I am puzzled that the extensive knowledge and work and 
>> examples of successful forms of experimental
>> inclusive deliberative democracy such as citizens assemblies and sortition 
>> has gained such little interest or traction. Why is
>> that?
>> 
>> Without such formations there is no possibility of a knowledge democracy in 
>> which citizens, stake holders and experts deliberate
>> on the issues of public concern..And all we are left with is a slide towards 
>> a Hobbsian war of all against all. Maybe politics like journalism
>> now finds itself unable to shake off the old adage ‘if it bleeds it leads’. 
>> Is there democratic life beyond the fog of war?
>> 
>> I am imagining some kind of curatorial landing zone in which Evidential 
>> Realists join forces with Dialogical artists of the "social
>> turn” to forge some kind of tra

Re: notes on cancel culture

[Gary Hall]

David,

Thanks for your post on William Davies’s recent contributions to the 
London Review of Books. Enjoyed it.


The mention of Carl Schmitt brings to mind another critic of liberalism, 
Chantal Mouffe, and her philosophy of hegemony and antagonism, itself 
greatly influenced by Schmitt’s account of the friend/enemy relation. 
For Mouffe, the political is a decision that is always ‘taken in an 
undecidable terrain’. This is because social relations are not fixed or 
natural, but rather the product of hegemonic articulations: that is, of 
contingent yet temporary decisions involving power and conflict. (Which 
has the advantage that these hegemonic articulations can be 
disarticulated, transformed and rearticulated as a result of struggle 
between opponents.)


Now, I realize this may seem a rather counter-intuitive question to ask 
- particularly for readers of the London Review of Books! But I do 
worry, is there a risk that using terms and concepts like ‘argument’, 
‘careful judgement’, ‘knowledge’, ‘democracy’, ‘public’ as datum points 
in this way is itself a form of affective politics that ‘“precedes 
debate, precedes argument, precedes speech”’? Might it, too, be a 
‘decisionism’, “an acting out or performance of some prior act of 
identification”’ - one in which the question of what it is to be 
political, especially in relation to ‘cancel culture’, is not taken in 
an undecidable terrain, but is rather decided in advance of intellectual 
questioning?


Here’s a less subtle (and less philosophical) version of the concern 
that’s troubling me and that I'm not expressing as well as I'd like: How 
do we as ‘net critics’ avoid coming across - especially to certain of 
those progressive or marginalized voices who may have found themselves 
associated with cancel culture - as merely activist/artist/geek versions 
of the liberal signatories to the Letter on Justice and Open Debate that 
appeared in Harper’s Magazine at the beginning of July and that Geert 
also refers to in his piece on cancel culture?


Cheers, Gary


On 14/08/2020 13:24, David Garcia wrote:
The whole world Cancel culture gets an even more sinister twist than 
usual when put through the filter
of the title of a recent article by William Davies entitled “Who am I 
Prepared to Kill? In which he explores aspects
of Nazi Jurist and philosopher Carl Schmitt influential reduction of 
politics down to the base distinction between
friend and enemy and ultimately realised in the grim question "who am 
I prepared to kill and who am i prepared to

die for?”. Some see this distinction as the foundation of populism.

In a podcast (link below) Davies further develops this theme 
describing a politics that is worse than simple
‘factionalism’ which he characterises in terms of extreme forms of 
cultural identification where existential identification becomes
the very foundation of political difference. "And this political 
difference is expressed through an acting out or performance

of some prior act of identification”.

An affective politics of this kind that "precedes debate, precedes 
argument, precedes speech” In this extreme Schmittian landscape
cancel culture is the only logical outcome. In this world in which 
politics has no space left for the epistemic, in place of argument we are
reduced to the decisionism of picking a side. Not much space left for 
the careful judgement between rival truth claims.


Given this reality I am puzzled that the extensive knowledge and work 
and examples of successful forms of experimental
inclusive deliberative democracy such as citizens assemblies and 
sortition has gained such little interest or traction. Why is

that?

Without such formations there is no possibility of a knowledge 
democracy in which citizens, stake holders and experts deliberate
on the issues of public concern..And all we are left with is a slide 
towards a Hobbsian war of all against all. Maybe politics like journalism
now finds itself unable to shake off the old adage ‘if it bleeds it 
leads’. Is there democratic life beyond the fog of war?


I am imagining some kind of curatorial landing zone in which 
Evidential Realists join forces with Dialogical artists of the "social
turn” to forge some kind of transitional bridge to a less toxic public 
sphere. Any thoughts?


David Garcia
https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/lrb-conversations/press-the-red-button?utm_source=LRB+icymi&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20200802+icymi&utm_content=ukrw_subs_icymi
















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#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

Re: notes on cancel culture

[David Garcia]

The whole world Cancel culture gets an even more sinister twist than usual when 
put through the filter 
of the title of a recent article by William Davies entitled “Who am I Prepared 
to Kill? In which he explores aspects
of Nazi Jurist and philosopher Carl Schmitt influential reduction of politics 
down to the base distinction between
friend and enemy and ultimately realised in the grim question "who am I 
prepared to kill and who am i prepared to 
die for?”. Some see this distinction as the foundation of populism.

In a podcast (link below) Davies further develops this theme describing a 
politics that is worse than simple 
‘factionalism’ which he characterises in terms of extreme forms of cultural 
identification where existential identification becomes
the very foundation of political difference. "And this political difference is 
expressed through an acting out or performance 
of some prior act of identification”. 

An affective politics of this kind that "precedes debate, precedes argument, 
precedes speech” In this extreme Schmittian landscape 
cancel culture is the only logical outcome. In this world in which politics has 
no space left for the epistemic, in place of argument we are 
reduced to the decisionism of picking a side. Not much space left for the 
careful judgement between rival truth claims. 

Given this reality I am puzzled that the extensive knowledge and work and 
examples of successful forms of experimental 
inclusive deliberative democracy such as citizens assemblies and sortition has 
gained such little interest or traction. Why is
that? 

Without such formations there is no possibility of a knowledge democracy in 
which citizens, stake holders and experts deliberate
on the issues of public concern..And all we are left with is a slide towards a 
Hobbsian war of all against all. Maybe politics like journalism 
now finds itself unable to shake off the old adage ‘if it bleeds it leads’. Is 
there democratic life beyond the fog of war? 

I am imagining some kind of curatorial landing zone in which Evidential 
Realists join forces with Dialogical artists of the "social
turn” to forge some kind of transitional bridge to a less toxic public sphere. 
Any thoughts?

David Garcia 
 
 
https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/lrb-conversations/press-the-red-button?utm_source=LRB+icymi&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20200802+icymi&utm_content=ukrw_subs_icymi#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
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