Censorship research – Leibniz University Hannover

Figure of a monkey with its hands over its ears, symbol for a conscious unwillingness to hear

For a number of years now, the spectre of “cancel culture” has been conjured up in the media and at universities: bans on thinking and speaking supposedly hold sway. Those accused of being “cancellers” are primarily young, left-leaning, from a minority group and female – in brief: “woke” – individuals.

However, from the perspective of censorship research, the complaint of a new age of censorship is nothing new: this narrative is a continuation of the debate surrounding “political correctness” from the 1990s, under different media-related conditions. It can be explained as a defensive behaviour on the part of social elites, who have come under pressure in an age where a diversity of voices are expressed via social media. That their complaint of supposedly no longer being allowed to say anything is indeed expressed very loudly shows that the issue here is less about not being able to speak and more about a privileged unwillingness to listen in a diverse society.

Free speech and cancel culture

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More on the topics of censorship research, political correctness and cancel culture and on the work area focused on modern German literature and comparative literature:

Discussion with Prof. Dr. Matthias Lorenz and the censorship researcher Prof. Dr. Nikola Roßbach on “cancel culture” (in German)
Introductory volume by Matthias Lorenz, Literature and censorship in a democracy, on the topic of “political correctness” among other subjects (Open Access publication)
Information about the Modern German literature and comparative literature work area represented by Prof. Dr. Matthias Lorenz (in German)

In the German Department, Prof. Dr. Matthias Lorenz, professor of modern German literature and comparative literature, studies the social and political interrelationships of literature from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. His research focuses include, among other things, censorship and anti-Semitism research.