Call for no. 54 - Culture and Cancel Culture

Culture and Cancel Culture

Organizers: Rafael Santana (UFRJ) and Vinícius Carvalho Pereira (UFMT)

Submission deadline: until December 31st, 2024
Issue scheduled for: July 2025

The 21st century, especially in spaces like social media platforms, has directed the attack of the so-called cancel culture not only on public and/or mass media figures, but also on major names in literature, cinema, and the arts in general. This phenomenon seems to have become almost a norm in our historical time, although a work of art, as a human production, always goes beyond the "self" of each author or reader. After all, according to the Barthesian premise of the death of the author, the work of art will always be, at the same time, beyond or beneath the "self". Faced with this dilemma, the empirical author is, so to speak, just a small bead on the extensive rosary of humanity, and everything they write becomes absolutely larger than their own story and open to revisitations and reinterpretations in different times and spaces, according to whoever is reading. Given the urgency of these discussions in a hyper-mediated world where artists gain prominence and ostracism with equal speed in mass media, issue 54 of Convergência Lusíada addresses the theme of culture and cancel culture in the canon of Portuguese literature, in dialogue with other Lusophone literatures and cultures.