30 Apr 19 | News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”106499″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]“I worry that today even more effective in censorship than self-censorship is the capacity to make so much noise that the person who says ‘I’ve had a slightly different thought about the way we might look at this scientific issue or this moral question’, never gets heard,” said Trevor Phillips on the subject of “censorship by shitstorm”.
The current chair of Index on Censorship made the comment during a panel with Shohini Chaudhuri, a professor at the University of Essex, where the panel was held as part of Unspeakable, a series of events focusing on censorship as part of the Essex Book Festival.
“Stalin was incredibly good at this, there were lots of people he didn’t lock up, not many, but enough,” continued Phillips. “What he did do was make sure they were never heard. The Soviet academy would create a lie and the noise of what was orthodoxy would almost always drown out the innovator, the minority, the small voice that said let’s do something new.”
“It’s very much the case that voices can get buried, very much like news stories can get buried, and the government’s very good at this, massaging bad news by burying it under other news,” said Chaudhuri. “It’s hard to direct attention to a non-orthodox view when an orthodoxy becomes established.”
Chaudhuri went on to talk about censorship in filmmaking and how creativity can flourish under constraints. She said: “Censorship is traditionally seen as something that comes at the end of a process in the form of authorities banning the work once it’s already been produced.
“The idea of constraint is to see that those conditions are already there, that films and other artwork are produced under constraints and those constraints actually shape the work from the very beginning.”
As part of the day of debate, Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine, chaired a discussion on theatre censorship with actors from The Globe.
Panellists Matthew Romain and Phoebe Fildes were part of a cast ensemble who performed Shakespeare’s iconic play Hamlet in countries around the world.
“Shakespeare is definitely being used in different ways to perform plays about ideas in a way that a modern playwright couldn’t get away with writing,” said Jolley, who also led a theatre workshop with drama students at University of Essex.
While performing Hamlet, the actors rarely faced restrictions owing to how respected Shakespeare is around the world. However, there were occasions when political and cultural aspects led to unprecedented restrictions and constraints.
“Certain countries wanted to get the script in advance, and would want to see a few scenes in advance. When we performed in Vietnam, for example, before the performance, we had to perform a selection of scenes before a panel who sat there and judged whether or not it was politically appropriate.”
“I personally felt so deeply angry and outraged at just the very notion of there be a group of people judging what they deemed appropriate,” added Fildes. “To me it felt so inhibiting and as an artist to be censored in that way was shocking.”
Dean Atta, a poet who was listed as one of the 100 most influential LGBT people in the UK in 2012, performed some of his work, which often deals with questions of identity and social justice.
“There’s a great democracy to the idea of putting work online,” said Atta. “I feel like poets can use the platforms that exist there for them freely to self-publish their work, whether it’s online or printing their own books through self-publishing means.
“That can reach people and it does, so I feel like don’t wait for gatekeepers or for anyone to give you permission to write what you want to write about, if you feel passionately and you need to share that then do that.”[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”106500″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1556616356392-9042b591-8d9e-5″ taxonomies=”8890″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
22 Feb 19 | History, Magazine, News and features, Press Releases
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“With concern for those not free” The spring 1972 Index on Censorship magazine was the first issue. Read it now for free.
Index on Censorship is pleased to announce that the online archive of 45 years of publications of Index on Censorship magazine, published by SAGE Publishing, will be free to read globally.
Free archive access will cover the years 1972 to the end of 2017, and will give students, researchers and those interested in research and reading on freedom of expression online access to journalism and reporting about freedom of expression issues, plus stories by and about censored writers and artists.
The archive is available on the SAGE Publishing website, where users can browse by year or keyword search.
“Free speech is increasingly becoming one of the most fiercely contested and misunderstood issues of our time,” said Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine. “It’s incredibly important that people can trace and learn from trends in freedom of expression and censorship as we experience many authoritarian leaders following a similar playbook to the 1970s and 1980s. We want to ensure as many people as possible are able to access stories and articles on issues of freedom of expression and by censored writers and artists by using this archive.”
Until now, access to the Index on Censorship magazine archive has been through paid subscription. From February 21 2019 all back issues of the magazine, excluding the four most recent issues, will be freely available.
Since its establishment in 1972, Index on Censorship magazine has published some of the greatest names in literature including Samuel Beckett, Nadine Gordimer, Mario Vargas Llosa, Hilary Mantel and Kurt Vonnegut. It also has published some of the greatest campaigning writers of our age from Vaclav Havel to Amartya Sen and Ariel Dorfman plus journalism from Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, China, India, Turkey and more. Editor Rachael Jolley was named British Society of Editors’ editor of the year in the specialist publication category (2016) and the magazine has received numerous awards including the APEX Award for Excellence and the Hermann Kesten prize.
With each new issue of the magazine, an archival issue will become available for students, researchers and supporters of free expression. The four latest issues of the magazine are available for purchase in print or digital formats via SAGE Publishing, bookshops and Exact Editions.
For more information, please contact [email protected].
Subscription information
Annual digital subscription (four issues) £18
A complete digital replica of the magazine
Annual print subscription (four issues) £35
Four high-quality print editions delivered to your door
Available at these bookshops
BFI, Serpentine Gallery and MagCulture (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester) and Red Lion Books (Colchester).
Apps
- iPad/iPhone £1.49 (USD $2.90) per issue
- Buy one or more issues. Download the preview app (21 pages of latest issue for free), free upgrade the preview app to a 30-day subscription.
- Android tablets/phones
- Download the Exactly app from the Google Play store. A one-year subscription is £17.99 | $17.99
- Kindle Fire
- Download the Exactly app from Amazon. A one-year subscription is £17.99 | $17.99
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25 Jan 19 | Magazine, News and features, Volume 47.04 Winter 2018 Extras
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Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine, Sally Gimson, deputy editor, and Tracey Bagshaw, journalist and magazine contributor — with special help from editorial assistant Lewis Jennings — were live on air at Resonance FM on 21 January to discuss the latest issue which takes a special look at why different societies stop people discussing the most significant events in life.
In China, as Karoline Kan reports, women were forced for many years to have just one child and now they are being pushed to have two, but it is not something to talk about. In South Korea Steven Borowiec finds men have taken to social media to condemn a new film adaptation of a novel about motherhood. Irene Caselli describes the consequences in Latin America of preventing discussion about contraception and sexually transmitted infections. Joan McFadden digs into attitudes to gay marriage in the Hebrides, where she grew up, and interviews the Presbyterian minister who demonstrated against Lewis Pride. We have an original play from Syrian dramatist Liwaa Yazji about fear and violent death. While flash fiction writer Neema Komba imagines a Tanzanian bride challenging the marriage committee over her wedding cake. Finally, Nobel-prize-winning author Svetlana Alexievich tells us that she is sanguine about the mortal dangers of chronicling and criticising post-Soviet Russia.
Print copies of the magazine are available on Amazon, or you can take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions. Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpetine Gallery and MagCulture (all London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool). Red Lion Books (Colchester) and Home (Manchester). Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
The Winter 2018 podcast can also be found on iTunes.[/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1548431570319-1f2dca2e-e6db-5″ taxonomies=”30752″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
11 Jan 19 | Event Reports, Magazine, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”104667″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]“I found it empowering to be told I couldn’t talk about something,” said Gabby Edlin, founder of Bloody Good Period, on the stigmatisation of periods at the launch of the winter 2018 edition of Index on Censorship magazine.
The issue, on the theme of birth, marriage and death, investigates what we are afraid to talk about and why. Whether it’s contraception misconceptions in Latin America, prejudice against interracial marriages in South Africa, or genocides around the world, a plethora of countries and topics were featured in this special report.
Taking place at Foyles’ flagship store in Charing Cross, London, which was once the world’s largest bookshop, Edlin was joined by award-winning author Emilie Pine, author of Notes to Self, and Xinran, the internationally best-selling author of The Good Women of China who also introduced the first women’s call-in radio show in China. The panel was chaired by Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine.
Edlin raised the taboo of period poverty, highlighting an unsettling scene in the Bafta-winning film I, Daniel Blake, in which a woman is caught stealing sanitary products and propositioned sex by a security guard in return for her freedom.
She said: “That was the moment that a lot of people woke up to the idea that, of course, women can’t afford this if they can’t afford everything else. But, everyone has experienced not having the product when you need it. It’s absolutely universal, it’s not just women living in poverty, it’s not just asylum seekers. Every single woman who has menstruated knows what it’s like to go without.”[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”104670″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”104668″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”104669″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]Xinran explained the pain of the controversial one-child policy in China: “Countryside women came to the city and realised girls have equal rights but in the countryside, the mother had to kill their daughters or give them away. Still now no-one talks about it.”
However, family policy is changing. “The Chinese published a new stamp because this year is a pig year – with a parent with three babies – that is a signal to a parent that it’s not one child, not two children, it is free now.”
“We think that we are now such an open, liberal society and you can say anything you want on Twitter, but actually we’re still very, very closed and we talk about things without really talking about them,” said Pine, whose Notes to Self breaks down the taboo of miscarriages and sexual violence.
“This woman, who I had never met before, came up to me and said, ‘I had a miscarriage two months ago and nobody knows’, and then just walked away. She walked away I think from having said it as well and from the need to say it. We need to tell our stories.”
For more information on the winter issue, click here. Find out why we find it impossible to talk about birth, death and marriage, according to Rachael Jolley. The winter podcast is also available on iTunes and SoundCloud.[/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1547210035015-71572e6c-f63e-3″ taxonomies=”8957″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
