Considering the Violence of Voicelessness: censorship and self-censorship related to the South African TRC process (original) (raw)

This paper attends to the silences that become particularly salient through the ways in which public communication in the media obscures minor details, alternative versions of an event, and even complete stories. In doing so it relates to various theoretical instruments introduced in Critical Discourse Analysis, that acknowledge the impact of unequal power relations, and the manipulative actions of those who are in charge of powerful institutions such as the security services in a totalitarian state, the information services of a government suspected of doing “dirty tricks” or the news media serving an ideology that will keep people careless of basic human rights, in power. It refers illustratively to the period of 1985 to 1990 when successive States of Emergency imposed strict censorship regulations on public news media in South Africa. [See Anthonissen in Wodak, R. and G. Auer Borea (eds.) 2009. Confronting Traumatic Pasts. An International Comparison. Vienna: Passagen Verlag.0

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