What we need for slides
‘Censorship is a notion of extraordinary potency. Through it we define
ourselves as readers, writers, and as citizens.’
Neil Sammells
Etymology of censorship:
1. the title of two magistrates in ancient Rome, who drew up the register or
census of the citizens, etc., and had the supervision of public morals.
2. One who exercises official and officious supervision over morals and
conduct.
3. An official whose duty it is to inspect all books, journal, dramatic pieces,
etc., before publication, to secure that they shall contain nothing immoral,
heretical, or offensive to the government.
Dictionary definitions of censorship:
5. One who judges or criticises
6. One who censures or blames; an adverse critic; one given to faultfinding.
7. A mental power or force which represses certain elements in the
unconscious and prevents them from emerging into the conscious
mind.
Is censorship thus that by which we define ourselves as readers and writers, that by which
we define our creativity?
‘Censorship cuts two ways.’
Michael Levine
‘The text’s suppression becomes not a barrier but a means to its articulation.’
Paul Hyland
‘writing is unthinkable without repression.’
Jacques Derrida (Freud and the Scene of Writing)
‘Authorship and censorship interact to induce creative plenitude.’
Nigel Smith
‘the question of censorship itself seems immortal, it is only the answers
which change.’
Donald Thomas
‘It would be nice to think that there was a simple, rational logic to censoring
which we could happily endorse or else completely reject without further analysis,
but it is more likely that there isn’t or isn’t always so.’
Richard Brown
Id like to sip those richlooking green and yellow expensive drinks those stagedoor
johnnies drink with the opera hats I tasted once with my finger dipped out of that
American that that had the squirrel talking stamps with father he had all he could do
to keep himself from falling asleep after the last time we took the port and potted meat
it had a fine salty taste yes because I felt lovely and tired myself and fell asleep as
sound as a top the next moment I popped straight into bed till that thunder woke me
up as if the world was coming to an end be merciful to us I thought the heavens were
were coming down about us to punish when I when I blessed myself and said a Hail
Mary like those awful thunderbolts in Gibraltar
From the final book of Ulysses
Following Whitman quote to go on handouts, but not on powerpoint (unless we have time to
read it)
Published copy
Once I pass'd through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use with its
shows, architecture, customs, tradition,
Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met there who detained
me for love of me,
Day by day and night by night we were together — all else has long been forgotten by
me,
I remember I saw only that woman who passionately clung to me,
Again we wander, we love, we separate again,
Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,
I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.
(Once I Pass'd Through A Populous City)
Original manuscript copy
Once I pass'd through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use with its
shows, architecture, customs, tradition,
Yet now of all that city I remember only a man I casualy met there who detained me
for love of me,
Day by day and night by night we were together — all else has long been forgotten by
me,
I remember I saw only that man who passionately clung to me,
Again we wander, we love, we separate again,
Again he holds me by the hand, I must not go,
I see him close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.
(Once I Pass'd Through A Populous City)
“the author has seen in advance which passages might give rise to objections
from the censorship and has on that account toned them down in advance,
modified them slightly, or has contented himself with approximations and
allusions to what would genuinely have come from his pen. In that case there are
no blank places in the paper, but circumlocutions and obscurities of expression
appearing at certain points will enable you to guess where regard has been paid
to censorship in advance.’
Sigmund Freud
‘Writers often achieve a power of concentration which political liberty, or literary
anarchy, would have allowed them to escape, when they are constrained by the
tyranny of a monarch or of a poetic, by the strictness of prosodic rules or of the
official religion.’
Marcel Proust
‘What is deadly is not freedom, but the violation of freedom.’
Zamyatin
‘The [story] becomes a “figure” for an extreme existential situation: the choice
between loyalty and betrayal, personal conscience and political expediency,
courage and moral cowardice, good and evil.’
L. Milne
‘To murder the thinker does not murder the thought.’
Arnold Wesker