WHAT ARE WE ADDING TO THE BONFIRE? CANCEL CULTURE AND UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

The main aim of this paper is to examine the perceptions from a group of university students about a series of events related to cultural cancellation. PREVIOUS STUDIES. The concept of censorship has been analysed from different perspectives like the ones from Bourdieu (1990) or Foucult (1999), which turned first into political correcteness (Manfredi, 2018) and then into cultural cancellation (Fourest, 2021; Ochieng, 2022). METHOD. A questionnaire was designed and filled out by 298 subjects, through which they were inquired about their stance on the following events: (1) the elimination of 200 folk tales from a library because of the sexist message attributed to them (2019); (2) the attempt to exclude the film Gone with the Wind from some broadcast platforms and the cancellation of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird in the USA, since both were said to have racist connotations (2020); (3) the removal of statues from public spaces for bolstering racism (2020). RESULTS. Results reveal that most participants are against cancellation, although to a different degree if the events are related to fiction or to historical representation of reality. Likewise, those that oppose cancellation display a larger cultural knowledge about the incidents under consideration. Another remarkable result is the high rate of indecisiveness amongst the group of participants. DISCUSSION. The two essential findings of the present study are: 1) the wide array of perceptions about cancel culture and 2) the significant influence that cultural knowledge exerts on those perceptions.