The CIVIL interdisciplinary conference is part of the post-doctoral research project «Censorship in Visual Arts and Film: The Greek experience from the post-war years to the present» (CIVIL) hosted by the Department of Political Sciences and History, Panteion University, Athens. This project has received funding from the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI) and the General Secretariat for Research and Innovation (GSRI). The conference, is planned to be carried out online, with livestreaming, on February 2022.

 

 

PART I: Censorship in the 20th century

 

Throughout the 20th century, censorship – as a major tool of various political regimes for regulating, restricting and controlling the freedom of expression – took many faces. Part one of the CIVIL conference aims to examine censorship in the 20th century as a productive process, meaning that, on the one hand, it determined the framework within which different dimensions of the public discourse were able to develop, while, on the other, it triggered the emergence of alternative forms of expression and creativity through which the regulated subjects attempted to overcome constraints. Thus, by revisiting well-known and by detecting unknown censorship events of the 20th century we attempt to explore how, under censorial pressures that defined the limits of social consensus and public debate, various fields in the public sphere were shaped. These include a range of socio-political and cultural trends, collective and individual behaviours, as well as the articulation of different identities – social, political, religious, ethnic, artistic, sexual, ableist and gender.

Moreover, we are interested in investigating the different regulating and sensorial apparatuses, ranging from those exercising formal and institutionalized censorship, such as the state, the Church and other power structures, to those imposing informal censorship (e.g. community and familial modes of control), including also self-censorship. The tracing of these collaborative or antagonistic networks of diverse constructions and social actors, as well as of the possible breaks and continuities in their practices across different periods of time, can significantly enrich our knowledge about the very notion of power in the 20th century.

Despite our emphasis on the Greek context, we are willing to address censorship from comparative perspectives, examining the Greek case in relation to South European, Near East and Latin American societies.

 

PART II: Free Speech and its Discontents

Belief Systems, Identities and Censorship

 

Traditionally, 'censorship' was restricted to direct forms of regulatory intervention and control by political authorities such as the State and the Church. Censorship was generally understood as the official suppression or prohibition of forms of expression, as being identical to its legal definition, namely the official inspection of several forms of expression before release to ensure that they do not offend against legal proscriptions instituted by the state. Growing awareness of issues such as political correctness, 'hate speech', ethnic minorities, pornography, feminism, and their relationship to free speech and censorship, have led to a surge of academic publications on these topics. This fundamental intellectual shift, exemplified by the work of Michel Foucault, holds that the state is not the only agent of censorship. On the other hand, the very same notion of a neutral state that liberalism has developed to ensure that there is no abuse of government power, has been called into question: how can, for example, minorities’ or women’s voices be heard fairly within a society that is systemically racist, sexist, and homophobic? Shouldn’t a liberal state deal with certain dominant racist, sexist, and homophobic views that have become so deeply held as not to be amenable to rational discussion?

Starting from this point, part two of the CIVIL conference aims to offer a comparative charting of the censorship discourse by adopting an inclusive definition of the term derived from new scholarship and the concept of 'new censorship'. Such an approach will allow us to shed light upon the gray areas of what has become known as a 'censorial logic', analyzing cases where censorship goes beyond its traditional definition and studying its very nature, its workings and uses. In other words, it will critically investigate the 'persistence' of the censorial logic through the analysis of concrete cases and phenomena and the refinement of the theoretical approaches to censorship in which the old binary model for understanding censorship in a libertarian versus protectionist divide is undone.

 

Paper Proposals

 

We welcome papers from a wide spectrum of perspectives and methodological standpoints, that focus mainly but not exclusively on:

• Power structures, discipline mechanisms, censorial institutions

• Censorship policies, methods and practices

• Formal and informal censorship, self-censorship

• Censorship in film, art, literature, music, performance, television, biography, etc.

• Censorship in journalism and the Press

• Political censorship

• Nation, ethnicity, minorities

• Obscenity, pornography

• Blasphemy

• Academia and censorship

• Implications of censorship (creation, circulation, consumption)

• Censorship and moral panics

• Identities

• Political correctness

• Hate speech

• Cancel culture, ostracism, exclusion

• Modes of resistance, collective and individual activism

• Discourses on censorship, discipline, silencing and control

 

The conference will be conducted in English and Greek.

 

 

Abstracts of up to 300 words + a short BIO (in Microsoft Word format, in English or Greek) should be submitted by December 30, 2021. The Committee will inform individuals of acceptances and rejections by January 12, 2022.

For Part One: christriantafyll@gmail.com & e_kouki@hotmail.com

For Part Two: valiatsirigoti@hotmail.gr & ppetsini@panteion.gr

 

 

 

Conference Committee

 

Dimitris Christopoulos, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences

 

Maria Chalkou, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences; Ionian University

 

Eleni Kouki, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences

 

Penelope Petsini, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences

 

Andreas Takis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki; The Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki – MOMus

 

Christos Triantafyllou, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences

 

Valia Tsirigoti, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences