Cancellare i testi antichi o gli antichisti? ‘Cancel Culture’ e censura dei corpi

Abstract

The essay reconstructs the debate on Cancel Culture and the decolonization of classical studies, analyzing its us origins and its distorted reception in Europe. In the American context, the focus is not on censoring ancient texts but on the bodies studying them and on the hierarchies regulating access to the field: race becomes the crucial category to challenge presumed academic neutrality, the notion of merit, and the hierarchy of approaches – with philology at the top – all seen as complicit in the physical and epistemic marginalization of minorities. Hence the demand for structural change in who is admitted to produce knowledge in the classical field. In Europe, where the issue was relaunched mainly by on-line media, the debate turned into simplified questions, recast as a defense of the classics against woke ideology accused of erasing them. At the same time, Europe voices a concern – ignored in the Us – that the politicization of Classics may further reduce their presence in public schools, freely open to a plurality of bodies.