From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,misc.legal,alt.postmodern,alt.censorship
Subject: Re: Hate Speech Okay, says the Supreme Court
Keywords: egnilges
Date: 24 Jul 92 21:20:58 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile


     (Note: The first part of this article appeared 
     with somewhat different wording a few months ago 
     in soc.feminism.)

Most discussions of censorship start out with the assumption
that it is possible to practice it.  I think that, except
in the sense of the overt, simple act of force in suppressing 
speech, it is not.  Consequently, even if Dworkin, McKinnon,
and other fans of censorship were right in some theoretical 
sense, I think the implementation of censorship is a waste of 
time in that it cannot possibly achieve its object, which 
must be the abolition of certain kinds of thought.

The reason for this is that censorship has to include in its
structure the very thing it seeks to repress.  The simplest
case of this is the famous command not to think of a one-
eyed camel; the corresponding act of censorship would be the
prohibition of speaking of a one-eyed camel.  Every act
enforcing this prohibition would, _per_se_, carry out the 
very action it sought to prevent.

It is the same with other forms of censorship -- the 
censorship of sexual or of violent material, for example.  
The censorship sets up a structure in which the thing 
prohibited is the central idea which lies behind every act 
of enforcement.  The result is (in the case of censorship 
of erotica) to sexualize everything on the boundary 
between what is censored and what isn't, because _the_ 
_boundary_points_to_the_center_.  That is why, in the 
Victorian era, it was considered rather improper for a 
woman's ankles to be displayed, at least if she were of 
a certain class.  The ankle became sexually inspiring
because it indicated the calf, which was hidden; the
calf, the knee; and so on.  Sometimes, people felt the
need to cover the legs of tables, and call them limbs!

It is important to notice that repression of erotic material
and displays did not seem to improve sexual mores during
this period.  It was common for men to consort with
prostitutes and bring home venereal disease (incurable, in
those days) to their wives, and nothing could be said about
it (because of the censorship).  We can see a similar
sequence of events with HIV in our own day; although there
was no legal suppression of discussion, those in control of
the media and the structures of political authority
preferred not to discuss it, practicing a kind of _de_facto_
censorship on themselves and their sevitors, and the disease 
spread unopposed except by the victim classes and their 
sympathizers.

In other words, while censorship is ineffective, _must_ be
ineffective, in controlling thought, it does seem to worsen
behavior, because those who wish to behave badly can
practice mystification to hide their intentions, even from
themselves.

There is a further sense in which censorship not only fails
to suppress its objects, but actually distributes them
throughout the discourse, the body of utterances, in which 
it operates.

According to information theory, if we exclude redundancy
and noise from a message, what remains is a set of symbols
which enable us to make a choice or choices from some 
universe of possible messages.  If the sender of the 
message, the writer of a story for example, can choose 
from a complete universe of possible utterances, we can
assume that she chose to say what she said, and that what
was said may mean no more than what is overt in the
message.  However, if a set of meaningful sentences is
excluded from the universe of choices -- for instance, if
the writer may not write an erotic sentence -- then the
forbidden material is an implicit possibility in all the
messages which are sent (stories which are written, movies
which are made, and so on).  

The prohibited erotism becomes, so to speak, the shadow or 
dark side of everything said within the reach of the 
prohibition -- and the more that is said, the more 
messages that are sent, the more probable it is that the 
prohibited is implicit in the permitted.  The repressed 
does not have to return; it simply hides behind the 
unrepressed and becomes part of it. 

The result of the systematic repression which censorship
calls for is the pervasion of the conversational universe
with the thing repressed, but in a darkened form.  In the
case of erotism, we can say that the entire discourse of
the repressing society becomes pornographized.  We do not
have similar words for the effect which the suppression
of language about violence, racial feelings, and other
thoughts deemed unacceptable brings about.  The result is
the same: the thoughts can no longer be examined in the
light of reason or even in the light of free intuition. 
The emotional force which attaches to them is in effect 
entirely unleashed; thus, it is said that "the repressed 
returns in monstrous form", because it is now deprived of 
intelligence and community.
-- 
Gordon Fitch | gcf@panix.com | uunet!cmcl2!panix!gcf 
*       1238 Blg. Grn. Sta., N.Y., N.Y. 10274      *
Xref: sparky talk.politics.theory:3085 misc.legal:15001 alt.postmodern:2213 alt.censorship:6380