This morning I happened to read two different papers on censorship and I was wondering how they could relate to each other.
The first one is a news talking about some controversial pieces that have been removed from the BJbiennale. Those works include some performances and videos related to the Sichuan earthquake. No one says who censored them, but we can reasonably suppose that this must be a government issue, since censorship has been widely used as a way to build a unified, common and unproblematic version of national history. Of course this is a very common story, as most of the modern nation-states that emerged in the last centuries have been building such a public and shared national history as a way to historically root a common national identity. But still, it is interesting to see what seem to be the limits of such a process, what are the events that are seen as problematic – or not. What I feel, is that the stronger the censorship, the weaker the nation it is supposed to protect, as if any problematic event would put in danger its very identity and unity. But is “state” the only element that is gluing China together? I don’t think so.
The second story is about the publication of Rushdie’s book, that originated huge controversies and eventually lead to death sentence for its author and those who helped the publication. A few persons got effectively attacked and even murdered, but as the author of the paper reminds us, despite the danger, no one ever renounced to publish it. Today seems to be a quite different story, though, and Malik notices that the censors lost that battle, but still won the war, as censorship is becoming very common not because of the state, but because of the artists, publishers, directors etc who do not want to take any risk anymore. This is not because of fear – at least, not explicitly – but in the name of the intercultural respect. The question then is: who has the right to speak, and who has the right to criticize, and in the name of whom? As he says, “Critics of Rushdie no more spoke for the Muslim community than Rushdie himself did. Both represented different strands of opinion within Muslim communities.”
Those are very important issues in a multicultural world, where the articulation between respect and criticism (and the capacity of taking critics) seems to be very complicated. To quote Malik again: “For such diverse societies to function and to be fair, we need to show respect for other peoples, cultures, and viewpoints. Social justice requires not just that individuals are treated as political equals, but also that their cultural beliefs are given equal recognition and respect. The avoidance of cultural pain has therefore come to be regarded as more important than what is often seen as an abstract right to freedom of expression. As the British sociologist Tariq Modood has put it, “If people are to occupy the same political space without conflict, they mutually have to limit the extent to which they subject each other’s fundamental beliefs to criticism.”
And yet “Far from mutually limiting the extent to which we subject each other’s beliefs to criticism, we have to recognise that in a plural society it is both inevitable and important that people offend others. Inevitable, because where different beliefs are deeply held, clashes are unavoidable. And we should deal with those clashes in the open rather than suppress them. Important because any kind of social progress requires one to offend some deeply held sensibilities. “If liberty means anything,” as George Orwell once put it, “it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” The trouble with multicultural censorship, and self-censorship, is not just that it silences dissenting voices. It is also that it often creates the very problems to which it is supposedly a response.”
So after reading this paper I was wondering about the multiple voices of china. It is sure that China is a multicultural nation under the cover of a same history, but in fact, what are the multiple voices of China and what are the limits and borders between respect and criticism? what form of censorship has been integrated by its citizens? how will this change, as the country progressively gains a greater importance and insertion in the world? Actually I realize that it is not possible to understand issues in China without relating them to the relationship between China and the rest of the world, as the country is putting a lot of energy to keep the face, even when this seems to be nonsense.