A coffee with… Judith Lussier | To put an end to cancel culture

Judith Lussier expected to receive the call from another columnist of The Press. A columnist – or a columnist – a little more woke, who would have more shared his positions to interview him on his new essay, Canceled. Reflections on cancel culture.

She fell on top of me. Little stress. She knew it wouldn’t go like butter in the pan. Because it must be said, his essay grazes some of my columns on academic freedom.

At La Graine brûlée, a colorful café in the Gay Village where she met me, I reassure her right away: I really liked her essay. It is right in many ways.

This observation, for example: thanks to social networks, we have never been able to express ourselves so freely. And yet communicating your ideas has never been so… risky.

This sentence, above all: “We must learn to talk to each other. ”

It’s true. It’s urgent, even. We have to talk to each other. In the debate on the culture of cancellation, dialogue is sorely lacking. On social networks, invectives take the place of discussions.

The trail is mined. However, we must find the courage to move forward. Stop camping in your positions. Open up to those of others. Otherwise, the cleavage will only get larger.

* * *

Judith Lussier does not hide it: initially, she envisioned the subject of the culture of cancellation as a concept to be destroyed.

But there it is. Judith Lussier realized this as she evolved in her reflections. Little by little, his certainties gave way to doubts.

In the end, the essayist thought to himself that the culture of cancellation was not a concept to be torn down, but to be deconstructed.

“We must question the motivations of individuals who denounce the phenomenon for ideological purposes, but we must also question our own behavior,” she writes in her book.

It will be understood, it is not exactly a punch test. We are far from the full load against the right. Judith Lussier made the effort to expose herself to ideas contrary to her own – and to qualify.

It’s rare these days.

* * *

One of the things that made Judith Lussier doubt was her overwhelming meeting with Josiane Stratis. In the summer of 2020, this fashion blogger was the target of a virulent campaign of ostracism on Facebook.

She had been accused of psychological abuse. Overnight, Josiane Stratis lost all her friends, all her contracts. He had nothing left. It had been “canceled”.

In her book, she adds, “Sit down for three hours with anyone who has been banned from public space and your perspective will be irreparably transformed. […] Everyone would probably benefit from listening more to people embodying a posture that conflicts with their convictions and others a priori. ”

Here is. The essential is said. Let’s sit down and talk, damn it.

* * *

Obviously, Judith Lussier would not have written the same columns as me on academic freedom. In any case, not from the same angle.

“We approach these stories, and I include myself in them, with our own biases. These are not simple stories. That said, all of these cases of cancellation involve “power dynamics” that must absolutely be taken into account, she believes.

In her essay, Judith Lussier denounces the powerful who are used to an “established order” and who do everything to avoid losing their power. “One of the ways to achieve this is, in particular, to ridicule the demands of these marginalized students by passing them off as outlandish childishness. ”

She illustrates this “enterprise of ridiculing marginalized groups” with a concrete example: a columnist making fun of a student because she confuses Celine Dion and Louis-Ferdinand Céline.

Here then, it is I who noted this confusion in chronicle, in February 2021. It had happened in a course of literature, at McGill University. So here I am assigned the role of the representative of the established order participating in an enterprise of ridiculing marginalized groups. Nothing less.

“Oh… did that hurt you?” », Asks Judith Lussier, a little uncomfortable.

No, not bother. Only, for once, it seems to me that maybe it lacks a bit of nuance …

* * *

Judith Lussier agrees: her perspective would have been transformed if she had sat down with the literature teacher accused of racism by this student for having studied an old Quebec novel containing the expression “working like niggers” .

For the teacher, the confrontation with this student had represented “the worst minutes of [sa] life “.

For the student, it had been “very traumatic” to read the angry word.

The same facts were perceived in completely different ways by those who experienced them.

In the cancellation stories, it’s the same thing every time. This phenomenon is a matter of perceptions. This is what makes it so difficult to narrow down. And so easy to handle.

* * *

It is true, as Judith Lussier underlines, that anecdotes have been blown out by the identity right, which is obsessed with wokes and some cancel culture.

True that these stories are recovered, even instrumentalized to silence those who demand more social justice.

True that the right cancels, too.

But by insisting that the media coverage is grossly exaggerated, one misses a worrying – and real phenomenon.

The puritanism of a fringe of left activists, convinced of the merits of their cause and ready to eject from the public space those who do not adhere to it, it is perhaps rare, but it does exist. . Teachers who censor themselves to avoid trouble, that also exists.

Judith Lussier does not want to minimize the testimonies reported in my columns. “But focusing too much on specific events,” she said, “gives the impression to a still very comfortable majority that we can no longer say anything. We fuel the idea that our freedom of expression is threatened by radical activists. However, when we look at the overview, there are several situations where things are going well in the classes. ”

The nuance, again. She may not be sensational, surely not sensational. On the contrary, it calms the debate. And this is precisely what makes it, more than ever, essential.