Overview
Calls attention to the crucial difficulties inherent in censorship when it is used as a tool for cultural criticism. The ""new"" censorship of the arts, some cultural critics say, is just one more item on the ""new"" Right's agenda, and is part and parcel of attempts to regulate sexuality, curtail female reproductive rights, deny civil rights to gays and lesbians, and privatize public institutions. Although they do not contest this assessment, the writers gathered here expose crucial difficulties in using censorship, old and new, as a tool for cultural criticism. Focusing on historical moments ranging from early modern Europe to the postmodern United States, and covering a variety of media from books and paintings to film and photography, their essays seek a deeper understanding of what ""censorship,"" ""criticism,"" and the ""public sphere"" really mean. Getting rid of the censor, the contributors suggest, does not eliminate the problem of censorship. In varied but complementary ways, they view censorship as something more than a negative, unified institutional practice used to repress certain discourses. Instead, the authors contend that censorship actually legitimates discourses-not only by allowing them to circulate but by staging their circulation as performances through which ""good"" and ""bad"" discourses are differentiated and opposed. These essays move discussions of censorship out of the present discourse of diversity into what might be called a discourse of legitimation. In doing so, they open up the possibility of realignments between those who are disenchanted with both stereotypical right-wing criticisms of political critics and aesthetics and stereotypical left-wing defenses. Contributors: Richard Burt, Stuart Culver, Donald Hedrick, Christian Jouhaud, Michael G. Levine, Timothy Murray, Aamir Mufti, David Norbrook, Dennis Porter, Brook Thomas, Jirina Smejkalov-Strickland, Jeffrey Wallen, and Rob Wilson.
Full Product Details
Author: Richard Burt
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Imprint: University of Minnesota Press
Volume: 7.00
Dimensions:
Width: 14.00cm
, Height: 2.30cm
, Length: 21.60cm
Weight: 0.484kg
ISBN: 9780816623679
ISBN 10: 0816623678
Pages: 416
Publication Date: 03 October 1994
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Temporarily unavailable
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Author Information
Richard Burt is associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of Licensed by Authority: Ben Jonson and the Discourses of Censorship (1993).
