Silencing oneself, silencing others: Rethinking censorship comparatively [introduction]
- Autores: Matei Candea
- Localización: Terrain, ISSN 0760-5668, Nº. 72, 2019 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Censures)
- Idioma: francés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
What is censorship? Is it different from other forms of silencing, and if so, how? Anthropology can provide some useful disturbances to familiar liberal debates about freedom of speech by expanding the cast of characters and the range of modalities of silence and expression. Yet the lessons of anthropology’s comparative explorations go beyond the blithe postmodern observation that silencing is pervasive. To speak of censorship is to mark out certain forms of silencing as illegitimate and unacceptable. An ethnographic attentiveness to the varieties of silencing must therefore keep in view the evaluative work which notions of “censorship” do for those who use them. Along the way of this comparative journey through techniques of silencing, this introduction suggests a broader observation: that the elusive distinction between censorship and legitimate silencing often relates to a sense of proportion between the silences actors impose upon themselves and those which they are thereby authorised to require of others.
