[Commlist] CFP - Deciphering censorship. From regulation to the production of invisibilities, from the archive to the Internet: an interdisciplinary approach

Call for Papers:
Deciphering censorship. From regulation to the production of 
invisibilities, from the archive to the Internet: an interdisciplinary 
approach
*
*
*Lisbon, National Library of Portugal, September 7th and 8th, 2023. *


    According to search trends on Google, the Portuguese/Spanish word
    “censura” and “censorship” in English portray the importance of
    their correlation with social media platforms,  (YouTube, Twitter,
    Facebook, etc.) and famous young women in Latin languages (Miley
    Cyrus, Megan Fox, Emma Watson and Lindsay Lohan are on Top 20
    correlated searches, between 2004-2022). These two major themes, the
    economy and moral norms, show how censorship remains a question to
    be dealt in the present.

    Nevertheless, such phenomena are hardly new. These phenomena, both
    economic and moral in nature, have accompanied the public and
    private sphere institutional regulation process, ever since,
    following the invention of the press, intermittent persecution of
    heretics was replaced by systematic control of printed material.
    Indeed, historical perspective enables observing censorship
    methodologies’ reorganisation in step with media technological
    development: cinema drove the age rating system (Robertson 2005),
    telegrams and, subsequently, telephone calls entailed flexibility in
    the controls exercised by institutions and agents of censorship.

    Despite censorship depicting a quintessential display of the
    exercising of power, which is historically wielded by influential
    subjects, managers of public space, economic processes, and
    political institutions (Martin 2016), consensus around the meaning
    of the word censorship has crumbled in recent decades (Müller 2004;
    Moore 2013; Darnton 2014). This collapse first came to the fore in
    the context of the ‘Culture Wars’ of the 1980s and 1990s when
    American liberal academics, anchored in theoretical approaches
    stemming from the works of Michel Foucault (1978) and Pierre
    Bourdieu (1991), demonstrated the existence of censorial phenomena
    within democratic contexts (cf. Burt 1994; Post 1998).

    The new approaches to censorship continue to accept that States may
    exercise direct control (repression) while also beginning to
    identify censorial dimensions of indirect control that may be
    deployed (through financing, education, public history, etc.) and,
    above all, starting to demand direct state intervention in the
    regulation of private powers exercising constraints on the freedom
    of expression (Post 1998). This includes the forms of “market
    censorship” that induce selfcensorship (Jansen 1988) or policies of
    “don’t ask, don’t tell” imposed on gay members of the U.S. Army
    between 1994-2011, enveloping them in a type of annulment embedded
    into the structure of societies (Butler 1998). This embedded
    character of censorship in society has been labeled “constitutive”
    or “structural” censorship in opposition to that wielded by
    institutions such as the state or the church, i.e., regulatory
    censorship. Within this scope, the recent issues surrounding “cancel
    culture”, the “woke” approaches to culture, and the biases of
    algorithms demonstrate how this phenomenon is socially structural.

    Hence the need to scrutinize such phenomena in order to
    scientifically distinguish between, on the one hand, censorial
    processes and, on the other hand, conservative discourses that –
    faced with the emergence of voices legitimately demanding new spaces
    for communication -, instrumentally deploy allegations of some
    claimed censorship to conserve privileges and monopolies. Therefore,
    we need to differentiate between boycotts and censorship, because
    they do not emerge from the same places in the power system.

    We are aware that participation in a conference that seeks to foster
    a global/international approach to studying censorship not only has
    inherent implications for the study of this specific field, but also
    constitutes a challenge to academia that, by thinking globally, runs
    into the material limitations imposed by the present moment
    contingencies of the academic system, with all of its peripheries,
    and the social and political pressures that shape intellectual
    production and dissemination.

    Communication proposals We would invite all parties interested in
    this theme to participate in the conference across any of the four
    axes detailed below. Nevertheless, there is an openness to other
    proposals that set out new paths and, hence, the framework below is
    in no way exhaustive.

    *Axis 1 – Analytical models and methodologies *
    How to approach the interferences of the different codes inherent to
    censorship? On the one hand, the society idealised by the
    institution, the one hypothetically resulting from strict compliance
    with the regulatory norms and, on the other hand, the actually
    existing society, with its references, prohibitions, plural
    resistances and creativity in answer to the invisibility of
    censorship? We are especially interested in models that explore the
    diversity of actors, contexts, and implications of censorship in
    interpersonal relationships (family, intimate, labour and social
    interactions).

    *Axis 2 – Framework for the factor of international circulation *
    The introduction of the circulation variable enables a questioning
    of national boundaries in the study of censorship. This axis
    prioritises those approaches that focus on the transnational and
    comparative aspects, whether introducing the notion of flow or
    focusing on the circulation of censorship, the censored and their
    forms of resistance.

    *Axis 3 - Meta-analysis *
      With censorship constituting a dimension that challenges the
    interpretative capacities of different actors, it would be remiss of
    researchers not to question their own respective subjectivity and
    capacity for analysis. What role does interpretative error occupy in
    the studies on censorship? How to navigate among the intentions of
    actors, producers, the censor's interpretative skills, and the
    diverse subsequent interpretative layers?

    *Axis 4 – Implications of censorship*	
      Censorial practices represent a point of entry into the analysis
    of power, culture, and political, religious, and artistic
    constructions. We seek to introduce this variable into the
    production of political, economic, social and cultural history.

    *Keynote speakers*:
    Prof. Nicole Moore, University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra
    Prof. Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor, 
Emeritus

    Nicole Moore is Professor in English and Media Studies at UNSW
    Canberra. From September 2022 to July 2023, she is the Visiting
    Professor of Australian Studies in the Centre for American and
    Pacific Studies at the University of Tokyo. Her main research
    interest is Australian literature, combined with interdisciplinary
    and comparative research in cultural history, gender and sexuality
    studies, and book history, with a special interest in censorship.
    Her 2012 book The Censor's Library: Uncovering the Lost History of
    Australia's Banned Books won the Walter McCrae Russell award from
    the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. Recent
    Edited collections pursue the topics of global literary censorship
    or Australian Literature in the German Democratic Republic. Her
    research pursues issues at stake in the political cultures of
    writing and reading, and the complex relations of literature,
    governance and history within and across national boundaries. Prof.
    Moore has held visiting fellowships at the Menzies Centre, Kings
    College London; the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge; the
    National Archives of Australia, and the Humanities Research Centre,
    Australian National University. From 2018 to 2022, she was Associate
    Dean for UNSW Canberra's Special Collections, fostering research,
    curation and partnerships utilising the rich manuscript materials
    and rare books in UNSW Canberra's world class collections.

Robert Darnton was educated at Harvard University (A.B., 1960) and 
Oxford University (B.Phil., 1962; D. Phil., 1964), where he was a Rhodes 
scholar. After a brief stint as a reporter for The New York Times, he 
became a junior fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard. He taught 
at Princeton from 1968 until 2007, when he became Carl H. Pforzheimer 
University Professor and Director of the University Library at Harvard. 
He has been a visiting professor or fellow at many universities and 
institutes for advanced study, and his outside activities include 
service as a trustee of the New York Public Library and the Oxford 
University Press (USA) and terms as president of the American Historical 
Association and the International Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies. 
Among his honors are a MacArthur Prize Fellowship, a National Book 
Critics Circle Award, election to the French Legion of Honor, the 
National Humanities Medal conferred by President Obama in February 2012, 
and the Del Duca World Prize in the Humanities awarded by the Institut 
de France in 2013. He has written and edited many books, including The 
Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie 
(1979), The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural 
History (1984), Berlin Journal, 1989- 1990, (1991), The Forbidden 
Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France (1995) and Censors At Work. How 
States Shaped Literature (2014).


    *Submission of proposals *

    Proposals should be no longer than 400 words, include a title and be
    accompanied by a short biography (max. of 100 words).
    The working languages are Portuguese, Spanish, French and English.
    E-mail for submissions: (decifrandocensuras /at/ fcsh.unl.pt)
    <mailto:(decifrandocensuras /at/ fcsh.unl.pt)>
    *Submission deadline: April 30th, 2023 *
    No payment from the authors will be required

    Organising committee Adalberto Fernandes (IHC/IN2PAST, NOVA-FCSH),
    Andru Chiorean (National University of Political Science and Public
    Administration, Romania), Daniel Melo (CHAM, NOVA-FCSH), Mélanie
    Toulhoat (IHC/IN2PAST, NOVA-FCSH), Rita Luís (IHC/IN2PAST,
    NOVA-FCSH) and Rui Lopes (IHC/IN2PAST, NOVA-FCSH)

    *References*
    Bourdieu, Pierre (1991). Language and Symbolic power. Cambridge:
    Polity Press.
    Burt, Richard (ed.) (1994). The Administration of Aesthetics:
    Censorship, Political Criticism and the Public Sphere, Minnesota:
    University of Minnesota Press.
    Butler, Judith (1998). “Ruled out: vocabularies of the censor”. In:
    R. Post (ed.), Censorship and silencing: practices of cultural
    regulation, (247-259) LA: Getty research institute for the history
    of art.
    Foucault, Michel (1978). The History of Sexuality: An Introduction.
    New York: Pantheon Books.
    Darnton, Robert (2014). Censors at work. How States Shaped
    Literature. NY: WW Norton. Jansen, Sue. (1988). Censorship: The Knot
    that Binds Power and Knowledge, New York: Oxford University Press.
    Moore, Nicole (2013). “Censorship Is”. Australian Humanities Review,
    54:45–65.
    Müller, Beate (ed.) (2004). Censorship and Cultural Regulation in
    Modern Age, Amesterdam/NY: Brill/Rodopi.
    Martin, Laurent (ed.) (2016). Les Censures dans le Monde. XIXe-XXIe
    siècle. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
    Post, Robert (ed.) (1998). Censorship and Silencing: Practices of
    Cultural Regulation. LA: Getty research institute for the history of
    Art and the Humanities.
    Robertson, Jim (2005). The Hidden Cinema British film censorship in
    action, 1913–1975 (e-library). Routledge.

    Conference organised as part of the research project CEMA -
    Censorship(s):an analytic model of censorial processes
    (EXPL/COM-OUT/0831/2021) funded by National funds through FCT —
    Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. The IHC is funded by
    National funds through FCT — Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia,
    I.P., under the projects UIDB/04209/2020, UIDP/04209/2020, and
    LA/P/0132/2020. Rita Luís, Mélanie Toulhoat and Rui Lopes are funded
    by National funds through FCT — Fundação para a Ciência e a
    Tecnologia, I.P., under the projects CEECIND/02813/2017,
    2021.03948.CEECIND, and 2021.04264.CEECIND, respectively  (English
    CFP starting page 6)

    *Links to the CFP:*
    https://ihc.fcsh.unl.pt/en/events/deciphering-censorship/
    <https://ihc.fcsh.unl.pt/en/events/deciphering-censorship/>


_https://ihc.fcsh.unl.pt/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2023-09-07_Decifrando-Censuras_CFP-02_web.pdf 
<https://ihc.fcsh.unl.pt/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2023-09-07_Decifrando-Censuras_CFP-02_web.pdf>_(English 
CFP starting page 6)
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