A critical realist understanding of cancel culture in academic settings

Cancel culture has been linked, in recent times in Western democracies, to the suppression of freedom of expression in both academic and non-academic settings. I offer critical realism as a resource to trace its conditions of possibility, focusing on the former. After the necessity of academic freedom to facilitate critical realist inquiry is noted, the emergent features of cancel culture are described and accounted for. I discuss the historical continuities in punishing freedom of expression and their authoritarian, religious and political versions of power. Identity politics and their attendant cancel culture keep up this tradition, but some new features, especially related to changes in technology and neoliberal individualism, have enabled recent forms of silencing and punishment.