Censorship, Yesterday and Today - International Symposium

History of censorship in the world,
from the 18^th century to the 21^st century

International Symposium, Paris, 6-8 February 2014

Selfban, by Solar Jam

Where does censorship begin, where does it end? Where is the limit between censoring and regulating? Does censorship still exists in democracies of the 21^st century? These are some of the questions addressed during this three-day symposium on the history of the practice of censorship throughout the world, event organized by several institutions and universities from Paris.

The symposium took place between Thursday 6 and Saturday 8 February 2014, in three different locations: Sciences-Po's history center, Paris 2 University and the INA center. From the first to the last day, people got to know one another gradually and it was in a good-natured atmosphere that the event ended.

The substance of the symposium was very stimulating, and all the interventions were very relevant to one another, not only to the general theme. This success was the product of a well-informed research and one-by-one selection of all of the participants instead of a general call to a vast and approximate range of scholars, one of the organizers and animator of the event told me, Mr Laurent Martin, History teacher at Paris 3 University.

Indeed French, English, American and Canadian scholars, as well as academics and activists from several other countries participated over the days to the general argumentation – which was carried out both in French and English. The schedule had been arranged in a dynamic fashion, and in particular the “round tables” offered lively brainstorms, where any one could ask questions to the experts and fuel the debate, which was much more opinionated than the rest of the symposium.

 

From the 18^th to the 21^st century, in totalitarian or democratic states, censorship has always existed and is still used today under many various forms, whether it be directed at political pamphlets in 18^th century France, the trade of pornographic literature between France and Spain in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, English and German theater plays in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, at the media today in China and Russia or education in Japan and the United-States. These are some examples of the addressed topics during the conference, wide-ranging both in nature and geography.

One of the highlights of the symposium was the round table of day 3, with the participation of activists: Ismail Serageldin for “Beacon for Freedom of Expression”, an international censorship database gathering information about censored media; Marie Korpe representing “Freemuse”, association acting against censorship in music throughout the world; and Agnès Tricroire, lawyer and representing the Human Rights League and the Observatory for Freedom of Creation. The very fact that they were people actively defending freedom of expression in several of its forms (whether politically, historically or artistically) offered an engaged and enlightening view of contemporary censorship.

Still, issues remain without clear answers even after the colloquy, due to their complex nature: first, the fact that there will always be the paradox of having more information about censorship in countries where it is not that effective in the end – since it is possible to have some knowledge of it – and much less information from countries where freedom of expression is completely oppressed at all levels. I wonder how the system of censorship works in North Korea.

Alexis de Tocqueville, who had already written
about the issue of the "tyranny of the majority"
in his Democracy in America, 1835

 Another moral question arose during the concluding round table of day 1, after a presentation of a case in Arizona, where a progressive Mexican American Studies curriculum in school books had been banned bythe Arizona legislature in 2010. The question was, is it morally more acceptable and/or better for the good of society to let experts rule – which would be compared to an oligarchy, but by people who have a round knowledge of what they're dealing with; or to let the majority rule – because the people have the right to decide of the aspects that directly apply to them, however flawed, partial or simplistic their knowledge of it might be? We therefore go back to the broader debate about democracy altogether, and its “tyranny of the majority”. But the issue, once again, remained unresolved and was rather quickly dismissed as well. 

It is of course not in the scope of a three-day symposium that the big problems of our century will see an end. Thankfully though, this kind of events show that there are still people on this planet who are willing to share what they know in order to open an intelligent discussion and act toward a better world, and it is with such initiatives that Man will not fall into the oblivion of its own mistakes.

This article was written for this blog only.