研究所、轉學考(插大)、學士後-英文題庫下載題庫

        'Cancel culture' has recently become the focus of heated public debates and controversies in countries around the world. Driven primarily by Twitter and other social media, cancel culture has become a common phrase referring to practices of publicizing, shaming, and shutting down individuals who are perceived to exhibit offensive, unethical, politically incorrect, or harmful behavior.

       Besides social media, the phenomenon of cancel culture has also penetrated universities through events such as speaker cancellations and campaigns in college campuses that demand the 'cancelling' of artworks, monuments or buildings associated with racism, colonialism, and sexism. These events have raised debates on campuses around the world concerning the ethical issues around the morality and motivations of cancel culture as well as the political implications of cancel culture, especially in relation to free speech. On the one hand, there are those who argue that calling out discriminatory behavior is a good thing because it helps the vulnerable deal with perpetrators. On the other hand, there are also those who criticize cancel culture for stifling free speech and open debate, suggesting that cancel culture ends up being a kind of a performative spectacle that enables those doing the calling out to feel morally superior. These critics question whether the practice of 'cancelling' really succeeds in addressing very real, structural, and pressing issues of social injustice.

      The phenomenon of cancel culture is much more complex than a binary scheme between those who argue for or against it. One way of seeing this phenomenon is to situate it in the broader terrain of 'culture wars' and how to teach this issue in schools. In other words, a key question for educators to reflect on is: How can the phenomenon of cancel culture be engaged pedagogically in ways that identify and challenge social inequalities, rather than getting stuck on cancelling individuals, leading to a toxic culture often filled with dogmatism and disillusion? The intention is not to dismiss the transformative possibilities of cancel culture in the fight against injustice. What may be the fundamental issue in debates around cancel culture is not so much the threat to free speech, but rather the ethical willingness for taking a restorative approach - an approach that does not reproduce the ostracization and social exclusion of perpetrators but considers how to reconnect people in their collective efforts towards co-creating a better world. [excerpt taken and adapted from The phenomenon of cancel culture through the social media: pedagogical implications for teacher education by Michalinos Zembylas, Journal of Pedagogy, Culture, & Society]