Censorship (original) (raw)
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The Power of the Word: Culture, Censorship and Voice
This pamphlet, written for the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women, is the first international treatment of gender-based censorship. It is also an argument for integrating culture and economic development. This was Women's WORLD's first extended treatment of the relationship of gender and censorship. It was written by Meredith Tax with input from a galaxy of international women writers. It has been translated into Russian, Spanish, Urdu, and ten other Indian languages. It contains descriptions of many censorship cases as well as a taxonomy of the various ways silencing occurs in women's lives.
“The Ways of Censorship: New Trends, New Challenges”
"The Ways of Censorship" is an introductory essay to the following volume: Iannaccaro, Giuliana and Iamartino, Giovanni (eds), Enforcing and Eluding Censorship. British and Anglo-Italian Perspectives, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014.
Censorship and Cultural Regulation: Mapping the Territory
The revival of censorship studies over the last two decades is due not only to the implosion of the Soviet bloc and the ensuing release of official records from East European states for research purposes, but also to conceptual changes in our understanding of censorship. Proponents of the so-called ’new censorship’ have advocated a view of censorship much broader than the traditional one by insisting that apart from institutionalized, interventionist (’regulatory’) censorship, social interaction and communication is affected by ’constitutive’, or ’structural’ censorship: forms of discourse regulation which influence what can be said by whom, to whom, how, and in which context. However, widening the concept ’censorship’ in this way carries the risk of equating censorship with any kind of social control, thus endangering its heuristic potential. The analysis of censorship should adopt Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance to distinguish between central and peripheral characteristics of censorship, in addition to using the communication model as a systematic basis for censorial practices and effects.
The Language Ideology of Silence and Silencing in Public Discourse
Qualitative Studies of Silence
The language ideology of silence and silencing in public discourse Claims to silencing as metadiscursive moves in German anti-political correctness discourse 1 Introduction The present chapter looks at silence through the lens of metadiscourse. The contribution of this chapter to the volume is that it points out how silence can be grasped analytically by studying metadiscourse about it. In doing so, it is also concerned with language ideology. I will argue that metadiscourse is indicative of attitudes towards or beliefs about the discursive phenomenon that is the object of metadiscourse, in this case silence and silencing. By way of a sample empirical analysis that illustrates the approach and the involve ed language ideological stances, I will deal with the anti-political correctness discoursea transnational discursive phenomenon since the 1990s that continues to cluster around language taboos, hate speech, (un-)sayability, access to and limitations of public discourse, freedom of opinion, denial of voice and representation, silencing and censorship. Hence, aspects of silence, or more particularly silencing, loom large in anti-pc discourse, and the shape and idea of public discourse itself is invoked and negotiated here with a view on voice as a condition for democracy (cf. Couldry 2010). It will be impossible within the scope of this chapter, and for an individual researcher, to cover the various appropriations of (anti-) pc in different societies and languages. Therefore, as a Germanist, I will focus on the German context. To my mind, the German anti-pc discourse is as good an example or case study as any other. Having said this, and based on a comparative view on the US and UK anti-pc discourse, I believe that anti-pc debates in other countries rest on similar wider premises and exhibit similar discursive strategies and patterns of argumentation as laid out in the following, so that this chapter should provide useful aspects for researchers concerned with other societies and languages, to consider and adapt for the specific contexts that they might be interested in. I will maintain in this chapter that the unsaid becomes utilized in anti-pc discourse as a discursive strategy. The unsaid features in anti-pc discourse as something that could (ontologically) be said, and that (socio-politically) wants, warrants or even needs saying, but is prevented from being said through language taboos, silencing or even censorship. Within this context, or pretext, however, what is claimed to be unsaid more often than not does get said, or if not at least a case is made for the legitimacy of it being said. Anti-pc refers to established links between public discourse and democratic representation, so that claims about the legitimacy of the unsaid entail the grievance, as well as the illegitimacy, of being silenced. It therefore seems that we are dealing with a strategic 'strawman unsaid'. It also seems that we are dealing with the more particular notions of silencing, taboo and censorship rather than silence more broadly. Silence can be a result of silencing as well as of deliberate choiceor both, in cases of, for example self-censorship for not wanting to take risks or 'rock the boat' by breaking a taboo or whistle-blowing. Taboos can have the effect of silencing (cf. Zerubavel 2006), as well as social marginalization "determined by the order of discourse that neither affords salience to certain points of view, nor resonance for voices from groups that are not perceived to be proper, or entitled, or participating speakers" (
One type of censorship comes to an end, but a new is developing, writes cultural theorist Dave Boothroyd. The power that corporations such as Network Solutions or YouTube wield produces a new form of subjectivity characterized by self-censorship. There is never any pure censorship or pure lifting of censorship, which makes one doubt the rational purity of this concept (Jacques Derrida, The Eyes of the University) It's important to know what one means by "censorship" (indeed, what has become "censored" in the definition of censorship) in order to understand the limits of its eradicability as well as the bounds within which such normative appeals might plausibly be made. (Judith Butler, Excitable Speech)
Editorial: Ambiguities of censorship. An international perspective
2010
When we think about censorship today, vivid images of brutal governments' repression of free speech around the world might come to mind. The works of courageous artists and activists like Ai Wei Wei-an outspoken critic of China's Communist rulers-are constant reminders of the curbing of dissent perpetrated by the Chinese government. Wei Wei's criticism has put him on a collision course with the Chinese government, despite his artistic international fame. In fact, he was assaulted and beaten by the police after having investigated and documented the names of more than 5000 children who had died under shoddy school buildings in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Similarly, we cannot forget the appalling murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, 'guilty' of having unfolded horrific stories about abductions and Russian military abuses against civilians in Chechnya. Likewise, we are aware that Iran has in place one of the most extensive internet filtering system in the world (OpenNet Initiative, 2007) that proved its strength when protests erupted over the recent disputed election victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Redefining Censorship: A Feminist View
Art Journal, 1991
There is a gaping discrepancy between the way censorship has been defined and discussed and the way it has actually functioned through customs, practices, and rules throughout its long history in Western culture. Despite the rampant and ongoing censorship of artists themselves, consistently manifested in the destruction of entire cultures, public discourse has limited the definition to the suppression, removal, or alteration of artists' works or the conditions of their display after the fact—when those works have already been accepted or installed for public exposition.1 This focus on overt, after-the-fact acts is actually a conservative brand of censorship based on the ideological assumption that public expression is a “natural” entitlement of the dominant (i.e., white, heterosexist Western male) perspective. Its double standard serves to resuscitate a dying patriarchy while conveniently ignoring the most pervasive and obliterating uses to which censorship has systematically been put.
Social Change 47(1), 2017
This book addresses a long felt need for theorising and compiling the recent debates that have taken place in India on the question of freedom of expression. The debate, in part, has been both stirred and rendered lively, by the emergence of the Internet as a significant medium of self-publishing and citizen journalism. The volume includes discussions on the issues of hate speech, hurt sentiments and censorship from the points of view of feminist scholarship, Dalit experiences, ‘Muslim hurt’, and also from the experience of activism and administrative proscription in Delhi University. Since it brings together contributions from not only different normative viewpoints, but also from different professional vantage points, the book seems to the reader a round table discussion on free speech.