Free
Authors: Scholz Trebor , Cobcroft Rachel 
Published: October 2020

This issue of M/C Journal reclaims the language of “freedom”.

The selected articles demonstrate that today freedom is frequently overruled in the name of a permanent state of emergency. Present-day politics shows countless instances in which information, knowledge and culture are not seen as an inalienable right but are rather oppressed and distorted. Freedom is the freedom to say “no”, to withdraw your collaboration, to refuse friendly cooperation! To be “free” means to be able to enact your identity without having to capitulate to the ruling forces that dictate which discourses are and are not permissible in the public sphere(s).

Citizens worldwide are armchair passengers on the nightly TV news train; they dream of their lives as being “free”. After all, to be free is a guaranteed human right, enshrined by the United Nations. Are freedom, independence and autonomy merely illusions, or are sociable media succeeding in empowering citizens for a participatory democracy as Yochai Benkler argues? If information “wants to be free”, the battle between intellectual “property” and creativity must be resolved. Technology does not make freedom inevitable: the on-the-ground-realities of network and hardware access make what seems to be “open” and “free”, closed and expensive for most people on this planet.

The feature article for this issue of M/C Journal is a statement on the state of free speech in a free country: in “Depiction of Muslims in Selected Australian Media: Free Speech or Taking Sides”, Dr Nahid Kabir examines the publication of 12 cartoons depicting images of the Prophet Mohammad in 2005. In exploring the response of two Australian newspapers to the Danish controversy, the article considers whether the debate in the name of “free speech” has ended in a “form of attack” on Australian Muslims.

In “Freedom, Hate, Fronts”, Patrick Lynn Rivers reflects on the use of the Internet by the predominantly Afrikaner “Vryheidsfront Plus” political party to construct whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa. The creation of a politics centred on racial “cyborgs” points to the facilitation of freedom of an “oppressed minority”, continuing the Afrikaners’ historical struggle for self-determination and independence. Problematising this approach, Rivers concludes that, like freedom, whiteness after apartheid is far from defined.

Authors Amita Nijhawan and Sukhmani Khorana both address Deepa Mehta’s highly-acclaimed film trilogy Fire, Earth, and Water. As a female Hindu director, Mehta engages controversial issues for Indian society: the life of widows who are forced into prostitution, for example. As observed, the trilogy has been subject to critiques of too much freedom from inside the country, counterbalanced by those outside the country condemning the Indian body-politic for its lack of freedom. In exploring post-colonial discourses in India’s construction of nation and gender, Nijhawan and Khorana present complementary accounts of the director’s struggle to resist government censorship. Hegemonic power is played out in the definition of freedom in relation to contested questions of self-representation in Indian society.

Freedom of use and the notion of “property talk” are discussed by Australian lawyer and academic Steve Collins, commenting on the revival of values from Blackstonian copyright, in which ownership is seen to preclude the rights of others. Collins observes that talk of “property” risks making transformative works an elitist form of creativity, available only to those with the financial resources necessary to meet the demands for license fees. The notion of “property” thus challenges the freedom to create and to transform. Collins notes that this is no longer a philosophical question, but a practical one, as he entreats courts to move beyond the propertarian paradigm.

A further angle on the issue of freedom is put forward by Nadine Henley in “Free to be Obese?” Here, Henley tackles the boundaries of state governance in controlling the bodies of its citizens: Is it ethical for a government to enforce the health of its citizens, or should obesity, for example, be a rightful choice?

Two emotive Freedom Poems by Kathryn Waddell Takara conclude this issue. The editors have selected “Angela Davis” and “Mumia Abu Jamal: Knight for Justice” from the larger body of Takara’s work, Root Tapping, as representing the desire to celebrate freedom. The expectation of Angela Davis’ arrival and the transcendent revenge for the imprisonment of political activist Mumia Abu Jamal speak of the power of radical opposition in the face of oppression.

The cover image of this issue, “Free” by John Fairley (“Bostich”), has been derived from the photo-sharing Flickr.com, which supports the Creative Commons licensing scheme.

Acknowledgments:

The editors thank all contributors and reviewers involved in this issue for their continuing dialogue and critical reflection on the notion of “freedom”. We wish to kindly acknowledge the adept assistance of copy editors Laura Marshall and Donna Paichl, and the continuing guidance of M/C General Editor Dr Axel Bruns.

Citation reference for this article

MLA Style
Scholz, Trebor, and Rachel Cobcroft. "Free." M/C Journal 9.4 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0609/0-editorial.php>.
APA Style
Scholz, T., and R. Cobcroft. (Sep. 2006) "Free," M/C Journal, 9(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0609/0-editorial.php>.