Dialogue with censors

Are all censorships the same? Nothing allows a priori to designate by the sole term “censorship” the management of the bookstore under the reign of Louis XVthe trials of books and shows at the time of the Raj (British colonization in India XIX^e century) and control of publications in the Democratic Republic of Germany. Robert Darnton, however, offers three scholarly studies on book condemnations in these different cultures, with the intention of creating a comparative history of the censorship phenomenon – a daring approach. Questioning the way in which a historian recounts censorship which is exercised in a chronological and geographical framework other than his own, Darnton avoids the unethical posture which would consist of relating the events as a heroic struggle of literary creation against darkness. of oppression – which would corroborate the dark legend of the vampire censor – the author prefers to describe the constraints and to understand in depth the role of the censors by diving into the archives and by penetrating the cultural context.

Creative censorship?

Two characteristic features of censorship emerge from the study. They correspond to the main meanings of the word censorship. Censorship in fact consists of a repressive decision with regard to a text, sometimes its author, its publisher, or even the complacent censor who authorized it. But before this final sentence, censorship designates an interpretative work of judgment on the meaning to be given to the text, on which the authors and the censors confront each other, but also collaborate. This surprising cooperation for the contemporary reader has left its mark on meticulous historians of archives, such as Maxime Dury or Odile Krakovitch, who even coined the neologism “co-authors” to speak of the censors. Darnton’s study ruins the cliché of the death struggle between creation and oppression, just like Leo Strauss’s “axiom” that “an attentive writer of normal intelligence is more intelligent than the most intelligent censor.” clever “. The comparison, however, has its limits, which Darnton insists on: each mode of censorship is anchored in a system of values ​​and socio-political practices which would make artificial any desire to extract a formal and permanent essence from censorship independently of its cultural breeding ground.

The historian seeks to understand censorship as one observes an indigenous tribe to understand its modes of thought and action. The ethnographic investigation presupposes diligent frequentation of the archives to enter into dialogue with the censors, not always a dialogue of the dead since Darnton opens the third study with a report of his interviews with the last two East German censors in 1989-1990 (Hans -Jürgen Wesener and Christina Horn). Such a dialogue is essential to avoid falling into the cultural prejudice against which Claude Lévi-Strauss warned investigators. This does not mean that Darnton believes in the possibility of an “objective” study detached from any preconception. It holds at equal distance the emancipatory narrative conditioned by our contemporary Western thought and the cultural relativism according to which we should not judge the censorship practiced by other cultures. Part of the conclusion is a monologue out loud where the historian questions his determinations, his value judgments and his personal beliefs. We hear the scruples of the researcher, anxious to accurately penetrate his object of study, fearing peremptory judgments, those of the detractors of all censorship but also those of the literary theorist Stanley Fish, for whom complete freedom of expression does not is just wishful thinking. Since perfect neutrality remains illusory, Darnton ends his introspection with the considered choice in favor of freedom, which he argues with a series of testimonies from censored authors, including the ultimate, Czesław Miłosz, despite his sincere adherence to the communist doctrine, experienced a “revolt of the stomach” in the face of the ban on all literature other than socialist realist texts; Miłosz and the exiles from the Soviet system, when they invoked freedom, “were not appealing to the protection of the First Amendment nor speaking as philosophers” (p. 307). The visceral need for freedom cannot therefore be reduced, according to Darnton, to the historical contingencies specific to a given society, although they should not be minimized. The whole difficulty lies in the balance to be found between the two pitfalls of cultural prejudice on the one hand, and cultural relativism on the other: “Historians are not equipped to evaluate the degrees of inequity in different periods of the past . But we cannot avoid making value judgments, and we should be able to recognize how our values ​​obscure our understanding, just as we acknowledge the conceptual framework that shapes it” (p. 309).

Extensions

Four points seem to me worthy of extension and discussion. The first concerns comparison. Darnton uses too many precautions to be accused of “comparing the incomparable.” He says it again and again, censorship cannot be separated from the cultural and socio-political soil from which it germinates. By abstracting a formal mechanism too much from historical data, we lose the meaning, the reasons and the specific functioning of censorship. The elements compared are therefore reduced to the strict minimum: repression and the hermeneutic work of the texts. This safe method deserves at least two extensions. The first is outlined in the introduction and conclusion: the comparison with the current implementation of Internet control. Darnton limits himself to a cautious invitation to compare the introduction of rules and surveillance mechanisms in this area with the old bookstore controls. The second possible extension would consist of comparing censorships not only with each other but with other neighboring processes, such as the judgments of literary criticism, which also assesses the value of works and separates the wheat from the chaff, or even the role of editorial directors, who submit the publication of a book to reductions and corrections, according to their own criteria. Literary professionals share with censors certain judgment, sorting and selection exercises to retain only the “good” books.

The second concerns the forms of stories that tell of censorship. Darnton distinguishes two: the emancipatory narrative and the ethnographic investigation. The emancipatory story, in that it corroborates the black legend, may have led to radical reactions; out of deconstructivist mania, some have strived to break the taboo by rehabilitating the unjustly criticized censor, to the point of making him a better reader than the critics of the time. The proponents of such a deconstruction question themselves: for example, the prosecutor Pinard perceiving the transgression of Flowers of Evil or Madame Bovary Did he not show himself to be more lucid than the defenders of Baudelaire and Flaubert, anxious to show the conformity of the two works with the morality of the Second Empire? It therefore seems to me that to the two forms of historical narratives distinguished by Darnton (the citizen narrative denouncing obscurantism on the one hand, the ethnographic investigation on the other), we must add a third: the deconstructivist narrative and willingly provocative rehabilitating the lucidity of the censor.

The third extension concerns the definition of censorship, a veritable Pandora’s box and bone of contention. It certainly seems impossible to agree among all historians on a single definition of censorship, a fortiori the general public. Darnton knows this, who questions in the introduction what censorship is; he leaves the definition hanging and only returns to it in the conclusion. He makes the ingenious choice of a restrictive definition for two reasons:

– firstly because he chooses to apply it only to the State (which covers simple administration, or which includes the three forms of political power, including the judiciary?). But the state does not monopolize all forms of censorship. The Catholic Index, in France XIX^e century, did not have the force of law and depended on the assent that the Catholic faithful were willing to grant to Roman decisions; the sanctions were spiritual or psychological. Certainly an immaterial or moral constraint seems incommensurate with physical coercion, but it also tests the author and his audiences. Social institutions or public opinion can exert constraints against works to the point of leading to their removal from public space, discrediting them or dissuading the public from viewing them. Between state censorship and the Roman Index, the border is not an abyss; between being placed on the Index and a boycott by literary critics, the difference is not very great either. The distinction between state censorship and its other forms therefore does not seem to be based on a clear solution of continuity.

– then because he refuses to trivialize censorship and reserve the term for the most coercive manifestations. This choice is easily explained by the corpus of studies chosen, that of authoritarian regimes. Certain stories are indeed untenable, such as the Stalinist trial launched against Janka, director of the Aufbau Verlag, the main East German literary publishing house, but compromised by his support for the Marxist critic G. Lukàcs at the time the latter had joined the anti-Soviet Hungarian revolutionaries. But in this way, we support censorship with its particularly cruel criminal and police consequences for the authors. Darnton’s essay indeed has the limits of its qualities: the fact of not separating censorship from its socio-political context. However, it is the penal policy of a certain culture which leads to forms of repression on the person. Without separating censorship proper from its penal consequences, would it not be possible to distinguish them and delimit the perimeter of the censorship phenomenon around the work of texts without extending it to the entire chain of police effects? In comparative history, how do we identify, or even isolate, strictly censorial data from the cultural and legal environment that accompanies them?

The fourth extension concerns terminology and the question of acculturation. Darnton rightly warns against hasty judgments about censorship. But the term itself has acquired a negative connotation, which it did not originally have. The Encyclopedia still gives “censorship” and “criticism” as synonyms. Darnton is aware of the extent to which the term has fallen into disrepute; moreover, the two East German censors he interviewed told him in turn that they did not like this word (p. 180 and 185). Because it carries a value judgment, the term censorship is trapped, if not for the historian-ethnographer who uses it, at least for the general public who reads it. A good part of public opinion expects the historical account to instruct the censors’ trial; THE Manifest of the Observatory for Freedom of Creation explains as follows: “History has always judged with severity these censorships and these condemnations which were, over time, the expression of an arbitrariness linked to a momentary conception of order public, the moral order, even the aesthetic order. » Under these conditions, if we want to avoid an ethnographic type story being inaudible, methodological prerequisites are essential, as is a definition of the phenomenon, which Darnton proposes. But historians of censorship would undoubtedly benefit from also warning their readers of the pejorative connotation of the term to keep it at bay and dispel the misunderstanding specific to the implicit “reading pact” which often characterizes essays on censorship. One of the most valuable merits of the present volume is to raise this historiographical and methodological question, even though it often embarrasses researchers without being explicitly addressed. Darnton does so with the great authority he has acquired on the subject. Historians of censorship are grateful to him for this.