Censors at Work

June 2, 2014
Darnton (The Case for Books), director of the University Library at Harvard, examines the complex relationship between central government censorship and authors, particularly how attempts to control communication and information have both improved and challenged the field of literature. He focuses on three distinct periods: 18th-century France, 19th-century India, and 20th-century East Germany. An intriguing story emerges as censors are presented as both a necessary evil and an authoritarian measure, working with authors as much as against them, and helping to—at least in the censor’s mind—improve literary works even as they force them to conform to certain standards. Acting as voices of the state, as editors, even as coauthors, censors are sometimes subversive and sympathetic, sometimes arbitrary and unyielding. Darnton’s argument is a mixed message, both upholding censors for their influence and bringing them to task for their part in enforcing stricter measures enacted by unforgiving governments. The writing is drily academic and the material often dense and abstract, as he struggles to assign a definition to the murky and wide-ranging concept of censorship. However, the story comes alive when Darnton interviews several former East German government censors to glean their experiences. While the material is sometimes arcane, it’s still a thought-provoking look at a controversial subject.

August 1, 2014
Twentieth-century philosopher Leo Strauss dismissed the censor as an ignoramus, incapable of interpreting serious literature. Darnton, however, finds the typical censor surprisingly shrewd in assessing the impact of literature. Indeed, Darnton's anthropological inquiry reveals unexpected nuances in the labors of censors in three quite different authoritarian regimes: eighteenth-century Bourbon France, nineteenth-century British India, and twentieth-century Stalinist East Germany. In all three of these settings, readers see censors acting cruelly: sending to prison a French servant whose novel evinces offensive irreverence toward the Crown; jailing an Indian social activist who exposes the cruelty of British overlords against India's native indigo growers; and locking in solitary confinement a German publisher who distributes a book transgressing Communist orthodoxy. But readers soon realize that censors usually act much more obliquely, drawing authors and publishers into a complex choreography of moves and countermoves, creating a negotiated space for literature defined by both the political calculations of the powerful and the cunning realism of the oppressed. A fascinating visit to the censor's office.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2014
Darnton (History/Harvard Univ.; The Case for Books, 2009, etc.) takes an ethnographic approach in this deeply researched comparative history, examining how censorship functioned in three authoritarian regimes: 18th-century monarchal France; 19th-century India under the British Raj; and 20th-century East Germany.The author's surprising discoveries complicate the definition of censorship as repression by a ruling class in its effort to control social order. In Enlightenment France, censors acted as collaborators with authors, taking on the role of peer reader or copy editor to make a manuscript viable for royal privilege-i.e., an official stamp approving publication. These censors, often authors themselves, assiduously carried out their role, and authors often willingly revised their work. "Despite the occasional disputes," writes Darnton, "censorship...drove authors and censors together rather than apart." The British in India, in an effort "to understand the Indians, not merely to defeat them," were intent on gathering information: "Everything was surveyed, mapped, classified and counted, including human beings....The catalogues of books belonged to their effort to catalogue everything." By monitoring publications, they could detect signs of rebellion. Not until the British noted "explosions of nationalism" in the early 20th century did surveillance lead to police repression and legal prosecution. Authors, publishers and printers were arrested and tried according to newly created laws. In Germany, Darnton talked with two censors and had access to considerable archival dossiers. The censors claimed their job was to publish works that fit into the government's overall plan: "Censorship as they understood it was positive. In some ways, it was downright heroic-a struggle against heavy odds to maintain a high level of culture while building socialism." Dossiers reveal the details of that struggle: manuscripts purged of references to individualism; dire restrictions on travel, even within the country; and outright violence. Censorship in East Germany, as elsewhere, involved an interlaced system of authors, editors, bureaucrats, publishers and, not least, readers themselves.In the current climate of debate over national surveillance, Darnton's vibrant history takes on particular relevance.

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