Within the public discourse of the modern democracies, "censorship" has become a pejorative term--the C-word. How dare you censor me! Yet, is there any expression of meaning that does not entail selection and holding back... and thus a kind of censorship? Is there an occasion for communication--for example a classroom, a court room, or a church--that does not presuppose a complex structure of enabling constraints? The mind may offer the best example of such a structure: " " Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams

In the early modern period, men and women used the oldest medium of human communications--speech--to assert speech as their natural right. [e.g. in 1722 Trenchard and Gordan wrote: that man who does not have possession of his own tongue ....] But what is freedom of speech? In the writings of Milton, Locke and Jefferson, and in the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution, this freedom is often defined in negative terms: "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech or the press..." One scholar claims there is no such thing as free speech. Is freedom of speech a romantic illusion, the opaque kernel of a secular spirituality? In spite of these question, the right to claim freedom of speech acquired legal force through the Enlightenment revolutions and the Constitutions framed in their wake.

Between humans and their meanings are the media of speech, writing, print...With each invention of a new medium, the powers at be wonder: how will this challenge our authority, our ability to govern? At the same time users seek to expand their role in the articulation of meaning, knowledge and pleasure. The struggle between censorship and freedom on the ground of media appears to be both necessary and interminable.

Censorship

Media

An Overview