Description
‘Cancel Culture, The Progressive Way Back From Woke’
Speaker Umut Özkirimli
Chaired by David Bell
Umut Özkirimli discusses how elements of what has been traditionally thought of as the left have been drawn, through the medium of identity politics, into forms of tyranny that act against the democratic ideals of freedom and pluralism that are central to its history. It is only by focusing on our common humanity and working across differences that the Left will find a constructive and consensual way back from this superficiality to more complex thinking. This Left criticism needs to be carefully discriminated from that coming from the right, the latter based on reactionary appeals to conservatism and so-called ‘family values’.
Umut Özkirimli is a Senior Research Fellow at IBEI (Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals), a professor at Blanquerna, Ramon Llull University, and a Senior Research Associate at CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs). He is the author of the acclaimed Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction, currently in its third edition. His writings appear frequently in all media.
