Cancel Culture Context: Gender and Sexuality After the End of History

In this talk, Ben Trott addresses the material context of what has come to be known as “cancel culture”, paying particular attention to the political contestation of speech around gender and sexuality in the years that have followed the 2007 global economic crisis. He provides an alternative to the dominant account of the current culture wars around speech, gender and sexuality as conservative or reactionary “backlash” to liberal or left identity politics. And he explores the role of speech as a vehicle for political organisation in contemporary social and political conflicts.

Ben Trott is Director of Gender Studies and speaker of the Center for Critical Studies at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany. He was previously Lecturer in Feminist Theory and Global Justice in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Cardiff University and held a postdoctoral position in The Program in Literature at Duke University. He is currently working on a book about the ongoing effects of the 2007/8 global economic crisis and the political contestation of speech, particularly around gender and sexuality, in the years that have followed. His broader work addresses political claim-making, the political efficacy and power of social movements, the political economy of labour, and contemporary political subjectivities.

He is co-editor of the German-language Queer Studies: Schlüsseltexte (Suhrkamp) with Mike Laufenberg. His scholarly work has been published in journals including Cambridge Journal of Economics; Emotion, Space and Society; South Atlantic Quarterly; Journal of Labor and Society; Global Discourse – An Interdisciplinary Journal of Current Affairs and Applied Contemporary Thought and ephemera: theory and politics in organization with shorter articles, reviews and essays also having appeared in Radical Philosophy; Berkeley Journal of Sociology; Political Studies Review; Development; Social Movement Studies – Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest; PhilosophieMagazin;Tribune and The Guardian. He is editor or co-editor of several books and journal special issues as well as three dossiers published with South Atlantic Quarterly (Vol 112, No 3; Vol 115, No. 2; and Vol. 120, No 4). He is editorial board member of the eight volume, International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 - Present (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

NYU campus access guidelines: Registration is required. Non-NYU guests may be asked to present a government-issued photo ID. NYU guests must present their NYU ID.

Accessibility note: This venue has an elevator and is accessible for wheelchair users. If you have any access needs, please email csgs@nyu.edu