Free Speech, Cancel Culture, and the Miseducation of Cousin Miles
As a person who prides himself on being critical — perhaps even to an excessive degree — I definitely support dissent and debate. But I also recognize that positions don’t emerge from the ether, without the weight of history and political power behind them. Opposing positions do not enter into some neutral “marketplace of ideas” uninformed by context. Rather, the context, as shaped by history and hegemony, dictates that any two positions will not “compete” on equal terms. For example, in the national “debate” over gay marriage, the weight of public opinion was for many years levied against it.
That a national debate wasn’t even possible for centuries before that, clearly indicates that the two positions — in favor and opposed — did not enter the debate on equal terms. Eventually, as public opinion shifted, and the basic civil rights of queer folx were recognized as worthy of defense, this lead to the legalization of gay marriage nationally. Even then, this didn’t really stop the “debate”, and there continue to be court cases over the rights of queer families, as private businesses deny them service on religious grounds, or states deny them the right to adopt children.
What is vital to understand in this example is that queer folx are and always have been an oppressed class in the United States. This means that any “debate” concerning their rights does not take place in some culturally and politically neutral space. Where the power of the state, reinforced by the cultural norms of the dominant classes are weighted against any group of people, it is often their voices, their perspectives, their rights, which are silenced and suppressed. We do not need any continued “debate” on people’s dignity or sovereignty or safety. Hegemony and counter-hegemony do not exist on equal terms.
Free Speech vs. Cancel Culture
In reading about this debate between “free speech” and “cancel culture”, as mediated by the Harper’s open letter, and the many different responses to it, I feel that there are a few critical points being left out of the discussion. First, it is important to distinguish “call out culture” from “cancel culture”. The former is about raising the issue of accountability, while the latter is about what the consequences should be once a person is held accountable. It seems to me that the two “sides” of this debate are confusing and/or conflating these two concepts.
Where the internet has allowed for a more equitable exchange of ideas (in theory), giving marginalized or oppressed people a platform they lacked before, people in positions of power and privilege can be “called out” for their abuse, and where this calling out is amplified by many voices, there may be in turn a public reckoning — from which “cancellation” is one possible outcome. The signatories and defenders of the Harper’s letter are clearly arguing against “cancel culture” — that is, what they see as the disproportionate punishment of people for expressing certain views, which also has a chilling effect on people expressing those views at all. While I think this can be reasonably seen as a suppression of free speech, punching down should not be granted the same liberty as punching up. The force of justice must back those who are subordinate to Power, just as Power is backed by the force of hegemony and the State.
Those arguing against the Harper’s open letter, most notably the response published by The Objective, are defending the right of people, particularly the marginalized and oppressed, to call out others, which is in itself a defense of their free speech. But there is some nuance to discuss here, with respect to opposing positions not emerging into a neutral space, free of context, or divorced from relationships of power.
As Anthony DiMaggio discusses in CounterPunch, the argument of the Harper’s letter is being made either in bad faith, or with a complete ignorance of or disregard for history and politics in the United States.
We live in a period when the rise of neoliberal capitalism and untrammeled corporate power have cheapened “public” political discourse to serve the interests of plutocratic wealth and power, while assaulting notions of the common good and the public health.
Anthony DiMaggio, “Free Speech Fantasies: the Harper’s Letter and the Myth of American Liberalism”
DiMaggio goes on to argue how this power dynamic has historically been heavily weighted against those on the “left” of the political spectrum, particularly in the Academy, where discourses around “professionalism” dictate that all legitimate scholarship remain within a certain ideological “center”, silencing voices on the margins.
This constraining of ideas to the “median” seems to be rooted in white USAmerican norms of white upper/middle class “decorum”, specifically the pressure to avoid conflict, or rather, to avoid any public appearance of conflict. Settle the lawsuits out of court, sign a non-disclosure agreement, don’t talk religion or politics at the dinner table, leave race out of it, and for goodness sakes, put those rainbow flags away, and keep any discussion of sexuality behind closed doors. This is far more complicated than I have time or space to discuss here, but put simply, those who benefit from the status quo (and those who aspire to) — by virtue of social, economic, or political power and privilege — would really quite like it, if the rest of you wouldn’t much mind, if we could just keep things “civil”. A premium is placed on preserving the appearance, not just of civility, but of the fundamental “goodness” of those in power.
