Cancel Culture

By: Jamie Joshi Elder

Cancel culture can also be utilized to a positive end in terms of personal relationships.

“There are times in relationships where our boundaries are crossed and we are being hurt or harmed,” she said. “We have a need for distance, for disconnect, for space and one might call that either call-out or cancellation.”

Dr. Bratini came out to her family as queer when she was in her early 20s and knew she had to take space to create healthier boundaries.

“Very close family members were causing harm, very directly and very openly and (taking space) was a way to self-care. A way to unpack, understand and give myself space to do healing work. To find myself, my power and my voice during that time.”

She emphasizes that these viewpoints are not just individual concerns but reflective of a greater systemic concern which needs to be addressed and that shifts occur when we have more collective conversations about the impact of distance, conflict and injustice.

However, there must be balance and in order for cancellation to serve as a positive force, it must be processed and understood.

“When not processed, cancellation can be a reflection of our own internalized oppression,” Dr. Bratini said. “We get stuck. Our relational connections disconnect, we become isolated and I see that as very problematic.”

We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice by adrienne marie brown is an in-depth look at Cancel/ Call-Out Culture and explores the origins of the ideal - as a way for marginalized and disempowered people to address harm - and goes on to ask how the practice serves us and how to seek accountability in ways that align with our values.

“It’s a beautiful, beautiful work,” Dr. Bratini says of Brown’s book. “It reminds us that we’re not perfect, that this work of liberation is messy, and that even those of us who care about this work have been socialized by capitalism. We must remember that our communities continue to be immersed in racist, colonial states. It is within these oppressive contexts that we’ve been taught that we cancel people; capitalist imperialist systems send people away to prisons; this is cancellation. So, while there are ways the practices are helpful, these practices cannot be divorced from the systems that have produced them. In the context of our most personal relationships, these are practices of disconnection.”

In order to cultivate the concept of cancellation as a helpful practice rather than one that harms, Dr. Bratini calls for collective effort and accountability.

“How do we be present in ways that are authentic and real?” she asked. “Speaking our truth to our experience but also being critically loving and owning the ways we’ve been harmed but also caused harm. How do we process that, support each other in doing that and repair what we need to do in order to come back? That’s collective work. I think that takes all of us.”

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