Richard Burt (ed.): The Administration of Aesthetics. Censorship, Political Criticism, and the Public Sphere (1994)

The “new” censorship of the arts, some cultural critics say, is just one more item on the “new” Right’s agenda, and is part and parcel of attempts to regulate sexuality, curtail female reproductive rights, deny civil rights to gays and lesbians, and privatize public institutions. Although they do not contest this assessment, the writers gathered here expose crucial difficulties in using censorship, old and new, as a tool for cultural criticism.

Focusing on historical moments ranging from early modern Europe to the postmodern United States, and covering a variety of media from books and paintings to film and photography, their essays seek a deeper understanding of what “censorship,” “criticism,” and the “public sphere” really mean.

Getting rid of the censor, the contributors suggest, does not eliminate the problem of censorship. In varied but complementary ways, they view censorship as something more than a negative, unified institutional practice used to repress certain discourses. Instead, the authors contend that censorship actually legitimates discourses-not only by allowing them to circulate but by staging their circulation as performances through which “good” and “bad” discourses are differentiated and opposed.

These essays move discussions of censorship out of the present discourse of diversity into what might be called a discourse of legitimation. In doing so, they open up the possibility of realignments between those who are disenchanted with both stereotypical right-wing criticisms of political critics and aesthetics and stereotypical left-wing defenses.

Publisher U of Minnesota Press, 1994
ISBN 0816623678, 9780816623679
Length 381 pages

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Richard Burt (ed.): The Administration of Aesthetics. Censorship, Political Criticism, and the Public Sphere (1994)

Calls attention to the crucial difficulties inherent in censorship when it is used as a tool for cultural criticism.

The “new” censorship of the arts, some cultural critics say, is just one more item on the “new” Right’s agenda, and is part and parcel of attempts to regulate sexuality, curtail female reproductive rights, deny civil rights to gays and lesbians, and privatize public institutions. Although they do not contest this assessment, the writers gathered here expose crucial difficulties in using censorship, old and new, as a tool for cultural criticism.

Focusing on historical moments ranging from early modern Europe to the postmodern United States, and covering a variety of media from books and paintings to film and photography, their essays seek a deeper understanding of what “censorship,” “criticism,” and the “public sphere” really mean.

Getting rid of the censor, the contributors suggest, does not eliminate the problem of censorship. In varied but complementary ways, they view censorship as something more than a negative, unified institutional practice used to repress certain discourses. Instead, the authors contend that censorship actually legitimates discourses-not only by allowing them to circulate but by staging their circulation as performances through which “good” and “bad” discourses are differentiated and opposed.

These essays move discussions of censorship out of the present discourse of diversity into what might be called a discourse of legitimation. In doing so, they open up the possibility of realignments between those who are disenchanted with both stereotypical right-wing criticisms of political critics and aesthetics and stereotypical left-wing defenses.

Publisher U of Minnesota Press, 1994
ISBN 0816623678, 9780816623679
Length 381 pages

More info (publisher)
More info (google books)

PDF

Sabrina Alcorn Baron, Brendan Dooley (eds.): The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe (2001)

The invention and spread of newspapers in the seventeenth century had a profound effect on early modern European culture and politics. The European pattern for the delivery and consumption of political information provided the model for the rest of the world. However, the transition to printed news was neither rapid nor easy and a greater circulation of news had widely varying effects.

Recent research has revealed much about the origins and development of news publishing in each of its European settings. This book is the first to bring this research together in comprehensive survey. The international contributors to this volume study all of the most important information markets in Europe.

Topics covered include:
* the relation between printed and manuscript news
* role of censorship mechanisms
* effects of politics on reading and publishing
* effects of reading on contemporary politics

What emerges from this research is a new view of political information as an enterprise, and of the products of information as commodities circulating far and wide.

Publisher Routledge, 2001
ISBN 0415203104, 9780415203104
310 pages

Keywords and phrases
corantos, Antwerp, Restoration Newspaper, Pory, Copenhagen, Venice, Marchamont Nedham, Spain, Dutch Republic, Habsburg, seventeenth century, Privy Council, Hamburg, Courante uyt Italien, England, newsbooks, censorship, Mercurius, Ben Jonson, France

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2013-6-5)