Cancellation, and Online and Public Shaming: Political Subjectivities and Grammars of Insult

Cancelación, funa, escrache: subjetividades políticas y gramáticas del agravio

This article presents a critical analysis of cancellation, funa (online shaming), and escrache (public shaming) as means of political questioning, which have become central in contexts where institutional frameworks are insufficient or corrupted. Drawing from a situated non-normative reading, we analyze the genealogies of such practices in the Southern cone, their use in feminist and anti-racist struggles, and their current deployment in digital settings crossed by regimes of visibility, overwhelming emotionality, and popularity algorithms. We introduce the notion of grammars of insult to explore how certain experiences are codified as legitimate damage and which affective and normative hierarchies are informing their intelligibility. Additionally, we problematize punitive and moralizing developments often stemming from these exchanges, particularly when articulated with a goodist ethos obliterating dissent and turning politics into the giving of legitimate affections. Far from either condemning or celebrating this, we suggest to politicize these practices responding to their conditions of possibility, their subjectivizing effects, and the horizons of justice enabling or restricting these activities.