Reimagining Repression

New Censorship Theory and After

Bibliographic Data

ID4496008
AuthorsMatthew Bunn (0000-0001-6184-5312, The University of Texas at Austin), Matthew Stephen Bunn (The University of Texas at Austin, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume54
Issue1
Pages25-44
Publication date2015-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory and Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2656 • E-ISSN: 1468-2303
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/hith.10739
OpenAlexW2091559718
LanguageEN
Citations received54

Emerging from the work of Foucault and Bourdieu in particular, a powerful theoretical critique of prevailing notions of censorship and its opposite, free speech, emerged in the waning decades of the last century. The principal theoretical contribution, I will argue, of this "New Censorship Theory" has been not to overthrow the dominant liberal conception of censorship, but rather to bracket this conception as a separate and ultimately subordinate species of censorship. In this article I reexamine the development of New Censorship Theory, especially its antecedents in the Marxist critique of bourgeois civil society. In place of an exclusive focus upon state actions, newer conceptions of censorship have enshrined self-censorship as the paradigm and have seen traditional forms of censorship as secondary to impersonal, structural forms like the market. I argue that historians' qualms about New Censorship Theory stem from concerns over this erasure of the specificity of state repressive force. Rather than simply accepting the division of censorship into a dichotomy of repressive/authoritative and productive/structural, this article argues that no strict distinction ought to be drawn. Instead, investigations of censorship in the traditional sense must incorporate the insights of newer theories to understand state censors as actors internal to communication networks, and not as external, accidental features. By investigating the intellectual trajectory of New Censorship Theory, I posit a way forward for historians to incorporate its insights while addressing their concerns

Bourgeoisie · Censorship · Cosmic censorship hypothesis · Epistemology · Law and economics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science) · Cinema and Media Studies · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Law · Philosophy · Politics and Society in Latin America

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