Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship

TLDR

The paper examines censorship from the perspective of an insider and notes that Coetzee sees belligerence and escalation as a destructive dynamic that dominates fields governed by censorship. The essays aim to explore the passion underlying acts of silencing and censorship. The book illustrates how writers have historically responded to censorship—from Mandelstam’s forced ode to Breytenbach’s prison poetry to Solzhenitsyn’s intellectual battles—and examines MacKinnon’s arguments on pornography suppression and the operations of South Africa’s former censorship regime.

Abstract

This is an analysis of censorship from the perspective of one who has lived and worked under its shadow. The essays collected here attempt to understand the passion that plays itself out in acts of silencing and censoring. Coetzee argues that a destructive dynamic of belligerence and escalation tends to overtake the rivals in any field ruled by censorship. From Osip Mandelstam commanded to compose an ode in praise of Stalin, to Breyten Breytenbach writing poems under and for the eyes of his prison guards, to Aleksander Solzhenitsyn engaging in a trial of wits with the organs of the Soviet state, the book focuses on the ways authors have historically responded to censorship. It also analyzes the arguments of Catharine MacKinnon for the suppression of pornography and traces the operations of the old South African censorship system.