Cancel: What kind of culture is that?

And is it even a thing?

Photo by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash

I’ve been much exercised lately by what I think is a growing intolerance of diverse opinions in institutions whose purpose includes fostering a variety of views. A few years ago, academics at Auckland University were put through a disciplinary investigation by the Royal Society for maintaining that mātauranga Māori, which loosely translates to “Māori ways of knowing”, does not constitute science.

Then, a few weeks ago, a debate on free speech at Wellington’s Victoria University was postponed when the student union reported that the presence of certain participants made some students feel unsafe.

Government organisations are grappling with their role too. Earlier this year, New Zealand’s national museum, Te Papa, considered banning a conference opposing transgender ideology from being held at its venue. More recently, Marlborough District Council was forced by the threat of legal action to allow Let Kids be Kids to hold an event at the public library.

For anyone who believes cancel culture is a thing, events like this provide ample evidence. Holding the wrong view can have you blocked from expressing it in many places, including ones funded by taxpayer money.

But is cancel culture any more of a thing today than it’s been in the past? In the 1880s Captain Charles Boycott, agent of an absentee landlord in Ireland, could not find anyone to do business with him after he tried - legally - to evict tenants during tough times. Even the local postman refused to deliver his mail.

But don’t think cancel culture is visited only upon far-right capitalist widow haters. The McCarthy era saw hundreds of leftists in America’s movie industry blacklisted on the most specious grounds. While it only lasted a few years, careers were destroyed for no reason other than people were suspected of thinking dangerous thoughts or of having sympathised with organisations that were perfectly legal.

Cancel is a late 14c word, which originally meant “to cross out with lines so as to deface”. It comes from the Latin cancellare, “to make like a lattice”, which was often used in the sense of crossing out a piece of writing - something no one does to their work any more thanks to computers, and what a shame that often is.

Within a hundred years or so, people had begun using the word in a figurative sense. If your local hood cancels your $100,000 gambling debt, you can thank him for his uncharacteristic generosity and thank 15th century English for allowing cancel’s meanings to include “to nullify”. (And if mafia movies are anything to go by, you can also expect him to turn up later asking you to make his shot-up son look unshot-up.)

The sense also extended to other, lattice-like things that could form a kind of barrier. The chancel is an enclosed area around the altar in some churches reserved for clergy and the choir. A chancellor was once the keeper of the barrier at a law court whose job was to keep the hoi polloi away from proceedings, granting entry only to those entitled to enter. (Today, a chancellor can be many things, including, says Merriam-Webster, the secretary of a nobleman, prince, or king; the lord chancellor of Great Britain; the chief secretary of a British embassy; a Roman Catholic priest heading the office in which diocesan business is transacted and recorded; the titular head of a British university; a university president; the chief executive officer in some state systems of higher education; a lay legal officer or adviser of an Anglican diocese; a judge in a court of chancery or equity in various US states; the chief minister of state in some European countries. How Chancellor of the Exchequer didn’t make the list escapes me.)

A chancel. Photo: Francis Helminski

Incarceration is also connected to cancel. Carcer is Latin for prison and carceres were the stalls at the starting point of a racecourse. Both words are a diminutive of the Latin cancer, which Etymonline says meant “crossed bars, a lattice”. I’m not sure how much weight to give that statement, as many other sources say cancer derives from the Greek karkinos, or “crab”; a reference to the hard, unyielding nature of late-stage tumours. That said, when the Roman physician Galen dissected a tumour or two, he remarked on the similarity between their numerous veins and how a crab’s legs extended out from its body.

Since we’re here, did you know that oncology comes from the Greek onkos, or “masses”? As one wag remarked, it beats having cancerologist at the top of your CV.

As for cancel culture, whether it’s a “thing” or not, it’s certainly one of a number of phrases at the heart of increasingly polarised conversations about what our society should look like. Woke is either a compliment or a deep insult, depending on who you talk to. Calls to deplatform anyone engaging in anything suspected of being hate speech are rife; and the definition of hate speech offered in some quarters is so broad as to be equivalent to “anything that could offend some groups of people”.

It’s part of what prompted the Free Speech Union to post this image during the Victoria University debacle. Horrific typesetting aside, I applaud it. One important mark of a healthy culture is its willingness to discuss a wide range of ideas and views, including those that some might find offensive. If there’s one place that should be nurturing that, it’s surely a university.

Instead, universities, government institutions and, possibly the rest of us too, are becoming a lot like those objects of historical fun, the Victorians, who placed covers over piano legs lest they provoke overpowering lustful thoughts in men, and never referred to things anatomical with anything but non-threatening, non-anatomical terms. Will future generations see us in a similar light? I suspect they will - and with good reason.

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Bits and specious

African elephants have (sort of) names for each other.

One or two spaces after a full stop? Here’s the definitive answer.

It is what it is, and other dumb phrases that may be killing thought.

Despite the best efforts of big-brained people, mysteries about grammar still remain.

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Quote of the week

The secular argument, or the liberal argument, is to as much as possible remove taboos so things do not become unmentionable; to let some air into the discussion.
Christopher Hitchens