Comedian Louis C.K, sorry/not sorry for repeated sexual misconduct, is playing shows to sold out stadiums. Controversial rapper Kanye West, whose latest release glorifies Hitler, is as influential as ever. And author turned gender critical feminist JK Rowling is on her super yacht with a cigar in her mouth, celebrating a UK court ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex.

Sketching out this landscape for a Melbourne Writers Festival discussion on “cancelling culture – is it possible to separate the art from the artist?”, literary critic Beejay Silcox asked the question of who is being cancelled these days, and what does that even mean?

Artists and thinkers have been shunned and ostracised for their perceived transgressions since time immemorial, Silcox pointed out. But in today’s hyper-connected, viral reality, cancellation comes with a constellation of distinct connotations. Social media, parasocial relationships, the corporatisation of art and identity politics are among the phenomena feeding the contemporary culture of cancellation, the panellists agreed.

“It’s unfortunate that the word ‘canceled’ can apply to someone like Oscar Wilde who was sentenced because he was homosexual,” argued entertainment journalist and host of the podcast Lamestream, Osman Faruqi.

“It can apply to Louis C.K, who lost some jobs – but not that many – because of his sexual abuse; it applies to Harvey Weinstein who is in prison for sexual assault; and it applies to Khaled Sabsabi who was [dumped by] Creative Australia because of statements he’s made about Israel which were seen as controversial. It just feels like none of those things really have much in common.”

Grappling with these issues alongside Silcox and Faruqi were the British philosopher and social commentator A.C Grayling, whose latest book is Discriminations: Making Peace in the Culture Wars, and culture critic at The Monthly, Tara Kenny.

While their discussion was billed as a debate, the writers shared a progressive take on the core issues, their arguments largely unanimous on questions such as how to define cancel culture, when and how it emerged, and whether it might be exercised as a good or bad cultural force.

Reflecting on what good might hope to be achieved by cancelling someone, Grayling argued that “one has to tease apart the different content of the cancelling endeavours … There has to be some degree of due process and thought [on whether] it’s possible that you could change peoples’ minds and behavior, and the people reform, and that there could be reparation of some kind when it’s appropriate.”

The panel agreed that the contemporary notion of cancel culture originated from a worthy place in that it gave marginal communities a voice to push back on damaging and offensive behaviours, and strove to bring powerful individuals to account if they were using their positions to hurt vulnerable people.

“There were lots of people that previously have been locked out of decision making,” said Faruqi.

“[Then] for the first time in critical spaces, in journalistic spaces, in the kind of spaces where we see accountability for people more powerful than us, people who are from marginalized communities, more women, more people of color, getting the space to say, ‘actually this guy Harvey Weinstein is a piece of shit’. There were marginalized voices who have been left out of the conversation now allowed to explain why these people are bad.”

But regardless of initially honorable or defendable ambitions, the movement then began to morph into something more toxic, according to the speakers.

“There was a peak when there was sort of a punitive approach to policing behavior [and wanting to] publicly denounce [people] for any indiscretion,” said Kenny. She saw this play out as “an impulse to pile onto somebody who made a fairly negligible mistake at some point, which is coming from that ‘it’s just fun to pile onto people’, and not that it’s constructive or necessarily going to lead to broader change.”

While cancel culture is usually represented as an enthusiasm of the left, it has been co-opted by the right as well, Kenny observed, being enlisted to “shut down progressive causes and sort of fear monger this idea that any attempts to create a more inclusive society are really about cancelling and making white Australians feel bad about themselves.”

The panel couldn’t pinpoint a one-size-fits-all approach to managing cancelling in the absence of some “foolproof matrix or some sort of moral algebra”, as Silcox observed.

Nevertheless, Faruqi presented several examples of artists whose work he could not ethically tolerate. They sat in two groups – those whose indiscretions were the subject of their art, and those who used their resources to do harm.

“Take Louis C.K, the comedian who has been accused of sexually harassing women by masturbating in front of them. A significant amount of the comedy in his acts are about that exact act, right? And so, it’s very hard to watch Louis C.K joke about something when you know that’s the mechanism by which he abuses people,” Faruqi said.

In the second category, Faruqi pointed to JK Rowling, who used her financial resources to subsidize legal battles against trans people.

“Given that she is using her resources and money to fund legal cases that attack the trans community, it’s very hard to have the moral sense from my perspective that it’s OK to buy Harry Potter books or go to Harry Potter world, when the part of that money will go to hurting the trans community,” he said.

But Grayling suggested that it was not always possible to take such a clearcut moral stance.

“Paying for music produced by a musician who’s questionable is akin to filling your car with petrol, and paying for it, and thereby subsidizing people who are damaging the planet,” Grayling argued.

Silcox took the position that it was “impossible to engage with art without economically putting your money where your taste is. And that makes these really difficult and tortured questions”.

Faruqi concluded that these moral conundrums deserved to be considered on a case by case basis.

“Let’s pick and choose what our fights are here, rather than trying to say there is one singular approach and if you transgress … you’re done,” said Faruqi.

“I just don’t think that approach, even if I’ve been tempted by it at points, has led us to any good.”