Iconoclastia e negazione. La cancel culture tra memoria e potere

The essay analyzes cancel culture as a long-term phenomenon rooted in historical practices of iconoclasm, establishing a dialogue between contemporary dynamics and premodern precedents. Drawing on Freud’s concept of negation, it argues that symbolic cancellation does not result in the elimination of the past but rather in its conflictual reaffirmation. The United States is adopted as a privileged case study for observing the competition between antagonistic memory regimes. Cancel culture is thus interpreted not merely as censorship, but as evidence of the structural difficulties faced by contemporary democracies in managing the plurality of historical legacies