Concepts of forgetting and cancel culture in the context of memory studies

The article examines the concepts of forgetting and cancel culture, which play a significant role in modern memory studies. The latter is developing as an area of interdisciplinary research that combines ideas about memory that exist in different scientific disciplines. The key issues in memory research include forgetting, cancel culture, politics of memory, nostalgia, psychological traumas, among others. Forgetting occurs when memory of a phenomenon, event, or person fades away. One of the trending topics in modern socio-humanitarian knowledge is cancel culture, representing a form of social boycott aimed at excluding an individual or group of people from social and professional circles as a negative reaction to some of their actions or statements. Presently, there is an attempt in the West to cancel Russian culture, including literature, music, ballet, art, etc. However, the cancellation of Russian culture appears to be not so much a cancel culture as a destructive technology aimed at breaking or at least complicating communications between Western countries and Russia.