Comment by [deleted] on 20/06/2020 at 11:28 UTC*

75 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)

View submission: Philosophical takes on cancel culture

In Discipline and Punish, Foucault talks about a sort of catharsis that societies get after "lashing out" at the scapegoat. This catharsis is such that it doesn't even matter if the person being punished is actually guilty or not; it's just about the collective effervescence that the mob gets from believing that justice has been served.

If you want to look at this from a perspective that's different from Foucault's power structures, Contrapoints, an ex-philosopher, has a lot of interesting things to say on this topic. https://youtu.be/OjMPJVmXxV8

Replies

Comment by Pinkfish_411 at 20/06/2020 at 17:01 UTC

13 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Rene Girard examines the scapegoat mechanism in great detail in several different works. *Violence and the Sacred* and *The Scapegoat* are good places to turn.

Comment by justasapling at 21/06/2020 at 00:43 UTC

5 upvotes, 0 direct replies

I love that you referenced both Foucault and Natalie.