.
from THE NEW PRESS
Publication Date: April 10, 2006
CENSORING CULTURE: CONTEMPORARY THREATS TO FREE EXPRESSION
EDITED BY ROBERT ATKINS & SVETLANA MINTCHEVA
PUBLISHED IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE NATIONAL COALITION AGAINST CENSORSHIP
In private, museum people have told me that self-censorship is indeed the order
of the day. But it is quite rare for an official to speak about it in public.
Self-censorship occurs behind closed doors. There are practically no
whistle-blowers.
Hans Haacke
We have as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the
process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder 'censorship,' we
call it 'concern for commercial viability.'
David Mamet
What are the limits of freedom of the press? The desirability of self
censorship? The need for cultural sensitivity? Twelve caricatures of the
Prophet Muhammad recently published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten not
only sparked violent protests across the globe, but raised these complex
issues, as well.
Closer to home, The New York Theater Workshop recently cancelled its production
of My Name is Rachel Corrie, because it anticipated protests from subscribers
despite the play's uneventful London run. Its action raises, yet again,
questions similar to those raised by the Jyllands-Posten incident and reveals
the unfortunate tendency to foreclose what was previously legitimate debate. It
is time to ask more probing questions: Just what is censorship today?
Self-censorship? How do they operate? And who is a censor?
In CENSORING CULTURE: CONTEMPORARY THREATS TO FREE EXPRESSION (The New Press;
April 10, 2006; $19.95 PB), co-editors Robert Atkins and Svetlana Mintcheva
tackle these critical issues by bringing together the latest thinking of art
historians, cultural theorists, legal scholars, and psychoanalysts, as well as
first-person accounts by artists and advocates, to provide an expanded
understanding of 21st-century-style censorship. Today, they assert, the culture
war-style scandal or spectacle fueled by politicians and the media simply
diverts attention from the real causes of censorship and the modus-operandi of
censors.
Contemporary censorship is at least as likely to be the result of the expansion
of copyright ownership or the contradictory laws regulating Internet content
around the world as a line edit or the removal of a nude from an exhibition.
Against this backdrop of neo-liberal economic arrangements and the increasingly
stringent policing of new technologies/media such as the Internet, the authors
locate the censor hiding behind disingenuous claims of protecting children or
exhibiting sensitivity toward racial, religious, or sexual minorities. To these
rationales for, or mechanisms of censorship, the authors point out a third
mechanism by which censorship operates--self-censorship. Widespread and little
understood, self-censorship is the point at which the public and private, the
political and psychological converge. In the former Soviet bloc, the buttoned
lip became a way of life, reminding us that when citizens censor themselves,
the censor, who is conventionally understood as an anonymous government
bureaucrat exercising prudish control over supposedly offensive art and speech,
can relinquish his red pen. Or even retire. Is something similar happening here?
Cutting across disciplinary boundaries and even formats, CENSORING CULTURE is
intended to help enlarge the public debate about free expression, Through its
varied essays, interviews and memoirs, this important anthology offers a
comprehensive and nuanced approach to understanding the new systems of
censorship now in place and already affecting every American. It includes a
conversation with Hans Haacke on the marriage of art and money; J.M. Coetzee,
Judy Blume and others on self-censorship; Lawrence Lessing on creativity and
copyright in the electronic age; DeeDee Halleck on the
military-media-industrial complex; Judith Levine on shielding children from
sex; Douglas Thomas on hackers; Randall Kennedy on the risks of regulating hate
speech; Diane Ravitch on standardized testing and political correctness;
Marjorie Heins on violence and children; and many others.
About the editors:
Robert Atkins www.robertatkins.net is an award-winning art historian, and the
bestselling author of ArtSpeak: A Guide to Contemporary Ideas, Movements and
Buzzwords and its companion volume, ArtSpoke. A former columnist for The
Village Voice, in 1989, he co-founded, Visual Aids. He lives in San Francisco
and Palm Springs. Svetlana Mintcheva is the director of the Arts program of
the National Coalition Against Censorship, an alliance of fifty nonprofit
organizations devoted to freedom of expression in the arts. She lives in New
York City.
CENSORING CULTURE: CONTEMPORARY THREATS TO FREE EXPRESSION
Edited by Robert Atkins and Svetlana Mintcheva
Published in conjunction with the National Coalition Against Censorship
The New Press / April 10, 2006
Paperback / $19.95 / 384 pages
ISBN: 978-1-59558-050-4
Contact: Natanya Mitchell Voice: (212) 629-4636 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________
nettime-ann mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-ann
