Censorship & Cultural Regulation in the Modern Age Critical Studies Vol. 22 General Editor Myriam Díaz-Diocaretz Assistant Editor Esther von der Osten-Sacken Amsterdam - New York, NY 2004 Censorship & Cultural Regulation in the Modern Age Edited by Beate Müller The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 90-420-0988-8 (bound) ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2004 Printed in The Netherlands CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii Censorship and Cultural Regulation: Mapping the Territory 1 Beate Müller Preaching and Playing at Paul's: The Puritans, The Puritaine,and 33 the Closure of Paul's Playhouse Enno Ruge The Censorship of Musical Modernism in Germany, 1918–1945 63 Erik Levi 'Anleitung und Kontrolle': Stakuko and the censorship of music in 87 the GDR, 1951–1953 Toby Thacker Film Censorship in a "Clean State": The Case of Klein and 111 Kohlhaase's Berlin um die Ecke Daniela Berghahn From State Monopoly to a Free Market of Ideas? Censorship in 141 Poland, 1976–1989 John M. Bates Performing the Unspeakable: Defeating Censorship in Two 169 Stories by Mario Benedetti Carmen Tisnado vi Contents Aesopian Strategies of Textual Resistance in the Struggle to 189 Overcome the Censorship of Popular Music in Apartheid South Africa Michael Drewett Representing the Censored Teacher 209 Anne Ruggles Gere Towards a Redefinition of Censorship 225 Helen Freshwater Index of Names 247 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The essays in this volume constitute a selection of papers given at the international conference "Censorship: Phenomenology, Representation, Contexts", which took place at Newcastle upon Tyne in September 2000. I should like to thank the authors for readily revising their original conference contributions. I am also indebted to the other delegates for their interest and collaboration, to Marieke Schilling of Rodopi, to Myriam Díaz- Diocaretz and Esther von der Osten-Sacken as the series editors of 'Critical Studies', as well as to my colleagues from Newcastle University who supported the conference. Henderson Hall proved to be a fine venue, not only because of its facilities but also because of its helpful and friendly staff. It would have been impossible to hold this symposion without the financial aid provided by the British Academy and the Small Grants Fund of the University of Newcastle. I should like to thank both for their generosity. Beate Müller Newcastle upon Tyne, July 2003 This page intentionally left blank CENSORSHIP AND CULTURAL REGULATION: MAPPING THE TERRITORY Beate Müller The revival of censorship studies over the last two decades is due not only to the implosion of the Soviet bloc and the ensuing release of official records from East European states for research purposes, but also to conceptual changes in our understanding of censorship. Proponents of the so-called 'new censorship' have advocated a view of censorship much broader than the traditional one by insisting that apart from institutionalized, interventionist ('regulatory') censorship, social interaction and communication is affected by 'constitutive', or 'structural' censorship: forms of discourse regulation which influence what can be said by whom, to whom, how, and in which context. However, widening the concept 'censorship' in this way carries the risk of equating censorship with any kind of social control, thus endangering its heuristic potential. The analysis of censorship should adopt Wittgenstein's concept of family resemblance to distinguish between central and peripheral characteristics of censorship, in addition to using the communication model as a systematic basis for censorial practices and effects. In a recent article, Sophia Rosenfeld stated that "in the realm of theory, there seems no longer to be any consensus about what censorship is".1 And indeed, literature on censorship published in the last two decades or so is characterized by more diversity than this field of study used to generate. I would not go as far as Robert C. Post who claims that censorship "used to be a very dull subject",2 but it is certainly true to say that in the past, censorship did not belong to the intensely disputed topics featuring in debates about, or involving, new and controversial theoretical or methodological approaches to the arts and humanities. This has changed. Nowadays, we see a proliferation of publications on censorship. Internationally known scholars work in the field,3 high-profile 1 Rosenfeld, "Writing the History of Censorship in the Age of Enlightenment", p. 217. – I should like to thank Chris Bramall and Alan Menhennet for their comments on this paper. 2 Post, "Censorship and Silencing", p. 1. 3 Jan and Aleida Assmann, Robert Darnton, Michael Holquist, Jonathan Dollimore, Stanley Fish, Richard Burt, Andrew Ross or Annabel Patterson, to name but a few. 2 Beate Müller publishers are producing books about censorship,4 even reference works and bibliographies on censorship have come out,5 and academic journals are running special editions on it.6 Looking at the programmes of academic conferences, one cannot fail to notice dedicated censorship panels, or even entire symposia focusing on censorship alone.7 Exhibitions devoted to the subject (and their catalogues) both indicate and reinforce censorship's new appeal.8 It looks as if censorship has become a more attractive, a more interesting, and also a more productive area of research. 4 Thus, OUP have published the catalogue of the New York Public Library exhibition on censorship, as well as monographs by Sue Curry Jansen and Adam Parkes; CUP have brought out works by Pierre Bourdieu, Lois Potter, and John Russell Stephens; Cornell UP have published Burt's monograph on Jonson; Manchester UP have produced a book by Janet Clare; Chicago UP a collection of essays edited by J. M. Coetzee; Macmillan one by Richard Dutton; Routledge books by Patterson, James C. Robertson, as well as Paul Hyland and Neil Sammells; Johns Hopkins one by Michael G. Levine; Suhrkamp books by Bourdieu and Jörg-Dieter Kogel; and Niemeyer's catalogue features works by John A. McCarthy / Werner von der Ohe, Bodo Plachta, and Beate Müller. 5 Cf. Hurwitz, Historical Dictionary of Censorship in the United States, Green, The Encyclopedia of Censorship, as well as the recent four-volume Censorship: A World Encyclopedia, edited by Jones. Note Frank Hoffmann's bibliography on the subject, Intellectual Freedom and Censorship. 6 Cf., for instance, the special section "In Tyrannos" by New Comparison 7 (Summer 1989), the two special issues on censorship of the Art Journal 50. 3 and 50.4 (1991), or PMLA 109.1 (1994). And of course, Index on Censorship has, ever since its inception in the early 1970s, criticized censorial practices across the world. 7 For example, the MLA featured sessions on "Historicizing the New Censorship" (1990), and on "Policing the Aesthetic: Political Criticism and the Public Sphere" (1991). Among recent conferences dedicated to censorship and related issues such as free speech are: "Freedom of Expression in the Late Medieval and Early Modern World (1350–1650)", University of California-Santa Barbara, February 2000; "Silence and Expression: Histories of Permission and Censorship", College Station, Texas, March 2000; "The Boundaries of Freedom of Expression and Order in a Democratic Society", Kent State University, Ohio, May 2000; "Censorship: Phenomenology, Representation, Contexts", University of Newcastle, September 2000; "Zensur im Alten Reich des 18. Jahrhunderts", Wolfenbüttel, Germany, October 2002; "Culture, Censorship and the State in 20th Century Italy", London, October 2002; "'Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen': Zensur wider Meinungsfreiheit", Paris, May 2003; "East Germany Revisited: Second East German Studies Conference", Berlin, October 2003. 8 Among the larger exhibitions to be mentioned in this context are the 1983 one run by the Berlin Academy of Arts in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Nazi book burnings, "'Das war ein Vorspiel nur ...': Bücherverbrennung Deutschland 1933", and the 1984 New York Public Library one on "Censorship: 500 Years of Conflict". Censorship and Cultural Regulation 3 At first sight, possible reasons for this development are not hard to find, if one adopts a European perspective. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ensuing implosion of the Soviet bloc, a wealth of official records and other archival material has become available to researchers. This is especially true of the former German Democratic Republic as the only state among the former Warsaw Pact nations which became incorporated into a Western democracy. The post-unification Federal Republic of Germany provided funding and passed legislation to ensure that the GDR's paper legacy – including, of course, anything to do with state censorship – was preserved for posterity and processed for research purposes. That the opening of state archives throughout formerly socialist Europe should have led to a huge increase in publications on censorship in that part of the world can hardly be surprising. But while the availability of new material is certainly one reason for the fact that censorship has become more high-profile, it is not the only one. Looking to the US, Richard Burt has identified another reason: the "right-wing agenda" of the Reagan / Bush administration and its attempts to curb some civil and aesthetic liberties in what Burt termed "the intense, prolonged assault on high and low modes of aesthetic production, circulation, and consumption beginning in the 1980s", which rekindled academic interest in censorship.9 Furthermore, growing awareness of and – especially in the American public sphere – debates about issues such as political correctness, 'hate speech', ethnic minorities, pornography, feminism, the canon, or the commodification of art, and the relationship of these topics to free speech and censorship, have led to a surge of academic publications in these fields.10 Arguably, however, the revival of censorship studies is the product of conceptual changes in our understanding of censorship.