Cancel Culture, Woke Movement, Tokenism, and New Sensitivity: an analysis from legal, moral and political philosophy

Abstract

This article is a reflection on current phenomena such as the so-called «woke» culture, «tokenism», and «cultural battles» as tension in the so-called «multicultural society», or the «cancellation culture» focused on some typical questions of legal, moral, and political philosophy. Once these phenomena are situated as an expression of a broader sociocultural trend, which we tentatively call here «new sensibility», the relations of the «woke» phenomenon with transformations related to the current state of the debate between recognition and redistribution become evident. The same regarding the "art of separation" and complex visions of equality (Walzer's "spheres of justice"), the autonomy of social subsystems in Luhman's terms, or the distinction between normative models typical of the Theory of Law. Political correctness, the relationship between law and morality, limits to freedom of expression, or "diffuse" neo-censorship are also part of the cultural change that affects issues in our field such as the management of cultural diversity itself.