We Will Not Cancel Us

And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice

88 pages

English language

Published 2020

ISBN:
978-1-84935-422-6
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4 stars (9 reviews)

Cancel culture addresses real harm...and sometimes causes more. It’s time to think this through.

“Cancel” or “call-out” culture is a source of much tension and debate in American society. The infamous "Harper’s Letter,” signed by public intellectuals of both the left and right, sought to settle the matter and only caused greater division. Originating as a way for marginalized and disempowered people to address harm and take down powerful abusers, often with the help of social media, call outs are seen by some as having gone too far. But what is “too far” when you’re talking about imbalances of power and patterns of harm? And what happens when people in social justice movements direct their righteous anger inward at one another?

In We Will Not Cancel Us, movement mediator adrienne maree brown reframes the discussion for us, in a way that points to possible paths beyond this impasse. Most critiques …

2 editions

Review of 'We Will Not Cancel Us' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

3.5 stars rounded up. It's hard to rate it any higher because it is an essay, not a work tackling this issue in depth.

This put some sophisticated words to some thoughts I've had, so I enjoyed that. The main question here is, when are callouts/cancelation appropriate? How do we mesh them with abolition and transformative justice?

In situations of great power discrepancies, severe wrongs, or exhausted alternatives - Brown sees callouts as a valuable action. But also something that should be taken on with a lot of thoughtful intention.

Some good quotes:

"...destroying a person doesn’t destroy all of the systems that allow harmful people to do harm. These takedowns make it seem as if massive problems are determined at an individual level, as if these individuals set a course as children to become abusers, misogynists, racists, liars."

“'Why?' makes it impossible to ignore that we might be capable …

Review of 'We Will Not Cancel Us' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Important points to consider and a welcome contribution to the discussion on how we treat one another inside of movements. However, as this was mainly an essay turned into a book, it would have benefited from further elaborating on some major points by drawing on the tremendous amount of research that already exists on how social media functions/is designed to elicit certain behaviors, how it changes our neural pathways and rewards systems, and how complex emotions and responses emerge in the mind and body and how those processes are antithetical to the world of social media.

introduction to transformation

4 stars

Considering the title of the book, adrienne maree brown uses the terms 'cancel' and 'cancellation' far less than I would have expected, and the same for 'cancel culture'. The title grabs attention, and works to place itself inside the 'cancel culture' conversation, as opposed to uncritically accepting a reactionary term as an accurate description of the problem brown tackles. The booklet begins with an acknowledgement of its limitations and a reflection on the flaws of its core chapter, 'Unthinkable Thoughts'. This chapter, which was originally published online and appears as an edited version in the booklet, recieved some valid criticism, which brown acknowledges ahead of its appearance. It's not clear which parts of the essay have changed, which is something I would have found useful for comparison. However the original essay is available online! brown can be vague in places, and at times her language can be difficult to parse …

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