Freedom of speech

Free speech is a familiar concept. It is an established ideal of liberalism and democratic politics, and the subject of political debate and conflict across diverse historical and cultural contexts. Free speech has not primarily been considered, however, as a set of lived, valued, and contested practices, mediated by various linguistic, ethical, and material forms. While anthropology has not traditionally occupied itself with free speech, it has extensive tools for bringing free speech into view beyond its quality as an abstract ideal or legal category. This entry borrows theoretical perspectives, as well as ethnographic examples produced by anthropologists, to shed light on free speech within a broader comparative frame. It begins by focusing on free speech as a dynamic value or virtue, asking: what is it about ‘free’ or ‘direct’ speech that people value when they value it? Secondly, the entry casts critical light on the idea of an individual as the universal ‘free speaker’, demonstrating how collective or disaggregated subjects can also practice free speech. Thirdly, it explores the material settings, contexts, or technologies through which free speech is curtailed or realised. Finally, the entry considers the idea of ‘voice’ as signalling modes of embodiment, and auditory phenomena such as noise, sound, and silence, which are not spoken language but can inform and expand our understanding of free speech

What's in a copy?

ABSTRACTI will answer the question “What’s in a copy?” by considering three sets of related issues: the importance of copies in academia; in cultural life; and in the economic world. In academia the current capability of making copies is challenging pedagogical practices and the trust of its members, plagiarism being the most immediate problem. The notion of authorship is also undergoing changes provoked by a proliferation of authors and new possibilities opened up by cyberspace. In cultural life, imitation and mimesis have long been fundamental engines of socialization. Our enhanced capacity of copying problematizes, with new intensity, the relationships between homogeneity and heterogeneity, between the genuine and the spurious. In the economic world, the digital era is threatening some of the fundamental tenets of capitalism, especially of its variant called the “knowledge society”, regarding the control of intellectual property rights. The gap between normativity and social practices is widening. The many dilemmas and tensions identified in the text are understood as symptoms of two major characteristics of the current times: hyperfetishism and hyperanimism. ________________________________________________________________________________ RESUMOResponderei à pergunta “O que existe em uma cópia?” considerando três conjuntos de questões relacionadas: a importância das cópias na academia, na vida cultural, no mundo econômico. Na academia a presente capacidade de fazer cópias está desafiando práticas pedagógicas e a confiança dos seus membros, o plágio sendo o problema mais imediato. A noção de autoria também está sofrendo mudanças provocadas por uma proliferação de autores e novas possibilidades abertas pelo ciberespaço. Na vida cultural, a imitação e a mimese de há muito são importantes motores de socialização. A nossa capacidade ampliada de fazer cópias problematiza, com nova intensidade, as relações entre homogeneidade e heterogeneidade, entre o genuíno e o espúrio. No mundo econômico, a era digital ameaça algumas das premissas fundamentais do capitalismo, especialmente da sua variante “sociedade do conhecimento”, no tocante aos direitos de propriedade intelectual. Cresce a distância entre normatividade e práticas sociais. Os muitos dilemas e tensões identificados no texto são compreendidos como sintomas de duas grandes características do presente: o hiperfetichismo e o hiperanimismo

Du taire au faire taire

Qu’est-ce que la censure ? À quoi la reconnaît-on parmi les nombreuses manières de faire silence ? Cette introduction examine ces questions à la lumière des contributions de ce numéro et d’autres travaux théoriques et empiriques sur la censure. Au fil d’un parcours comparatiste parmi diverses techniques du faire taire, et les façons dont celles-ci sont justifiées ou critiquées, l’introduction propose quelques observations sur les liens entre censure, expertise et maîtrise de sa propre parole, qui permettent de reposer autrement la question du faire taire

Of Reason, Honour and Carnival: French Law, Danish Cartoons and the anthropology of free speech

Influential anthropological analyses have made the 'Danish Cartoons controversy' into a paradigm case of the blindness of liberal language ideologies to anything beyond the communication of referential meaning. This article returns to the case from a different angle and draws a different conclusion. Following recent anthropological interest in the way legal speech grounds the force of law, the article takes as its ethnographic object the landmark ruling in which a French court judged that the Charlie Hebdo magazine's republication of the cartoons did not constitute a hate speech offence. The article examines the form as well as the content of the ruling itself, and situates it within the entangled histories of french press law, revolutionary antinomianism and the surprisingly persistent legal concern with matters of honour. The outcome of the case (the acquittal of Charlie Hebdo) may seem to substantiate a view of liberal language ideology as incapable of attending to the performative effects of signs. Yet a closer look challenges this now familiar image of Euroamerican 'representationalism', and suggests some broader avenues of investigation for a comparative anthropology of free speech

The Duelling Ethic and the Spirit of Libel Law: Matters and Materials of Honour in France

Contemporary french libel law explicitly proposes to adjudicate matters of “honour”. In so doing, it deploys terms and techniques crafted in the 19th century, at a time when law’s jurisdiction over matters of honour was strongly disputed by an alternative quasi-legal institution: the duelling code. This article returns to that historical moment from a legal materiality perspective to examine the ways in which duelling and libel law borrowed from each other’s materials in order to make honour matter. It argues that the history of libel law cannot be cast as a straightforward instance of the legal 'formalisation' of a mere social code, as traditional modernization narratives might lead us to expect. Rather, it shows the ways in which libel law came to be haunted by the material traces of duelling, and explains why honour remains, to this day, a recalcitrant matter for French law

The Mediterranean incarnate: region formation between Sicily and Tunisia since World War II

A review of Naor Ben Yehoyada's book The Mediterranean Incarnat

Silencing oneself, silencing others

What is censorship? Is it different from other forms of silencing, and if so, how? Anthropology can provide some useful disturbances to familiar liberal debates about freedom of speech by expanding the cast of characters and the range of modalities of silence and expression. Yet the lessons of anthropology’s comparative explorations go beyond the blithe postmodern observation that silencing is pervasive. To speak of censorship is to mark out certain forms of silencing as illegitimate and unacceptable. An ethnographic attentiveness to the varieties of silencing must therefore keep in view the evaluative work which notions of “censorship” do for those who use them. Along the way of this comparative journey through techniques of silencing, this introduction suggests a broader observation: that the elusive distinction between censorship and legitimate silencing often relates to a sense of proportion between the silences actors impose upon themselves and those which they are thereby authorised to require of others