Freedom of expression, democracy and cancel culture

Abstract

The present paper addresses cancel culture as an answer to opinions about contemporary cultural productions. It aims to respond the following question: Is cancel culture compatible with freedom of expression? The goal is to defend that cancel culture assumes a normative conception of democratic citizenship, according to which the people is only free if it is able to question its political and social arrangements. In order to do that, this work have as specific goals: 1) to circumscribe what is meant by cancel culture; 2) to make explicit drawing on NY Times vs Sullivan premises a conception of democratic citizenship that supports cancel culture; 3) to argue that an ideal of tolerance is implied by the same premises which enable the existence of cancel culture. An Initial circumscription of what is understood as cancel culture relies on the concept proposed by Wilson Gomes (2020). To understand the democratic foundations of freedom of speech and its connections with deliberative features of public sphere, proponents of deliberative democracy, such as Robert C. Post and Denilson Werle, are adopted as references.  Thus, the inquiry is legal-theoretical, analytic and normative, and its methodology consists in analysis of content blocks through arguments.