{"id":1547,"date":"2025-03-28T16:34:42","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T13:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/susma24.com\/en\/?p=1547"},"modified":"2025-10-08T17:08:46","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T14:08:46","slug":"fine-self-censorship-ugly-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susma24.com\/en\/index.php\/fine-self-censorship-ugly-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Fine self-censorship, ugly idea"},"content":{"rendered":"

DERV\u0130\u015e AYDIN AKKO\u00c7<\/span><\/h2>\n

\u201cWhat do you read, my lord? Words, words, words\u2026\u201d (Shakespeare, Hamlet)<\/p>\n

Lenin wrote an interesting preface to his seminal work Imperialism, written in 1916 during his stay in Zurich. Owing to the constraints of exile, he had limited access to primary sources \u2013 none from Russia, and only a handful from France and Britain. Nevertheless, he engaged deeply with J.A. Hobson\u2019s writings and meticulously compiled a wealth of materials: statistics, official reports, articles, and books that informed his analysis of the imperialism concept. But when it came to expressing his thoughts, Lenin encountered a much harder nut to crack: censorship. The pervasive censorship of modern power structures, compelled authors toward self- censorship, regardless of their intentions. Lenin himself lamented the \u201cslavish speech\u201d he was forced to adopt in certain parts of the text, a concession to the limitations imposed by censorship:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis pamphlet was written with an eye to the tsarist censorship. Hence, I was not only forced to confine myself strictly to an exclusively theoretical, specifically economic analysis of facts, but to formulate the few necessary observations on politics with extreme caution, by hints, in an allegorical language \u2013in that accursed Aesopian language\u2013 to which tsarism compelled all revolutionaries to have recourse whenever they took up the pen to write a \u2018legal\u2019 work.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1917, during the \u201cdays of liberty\u201d following the revolution, Lenin expressed that it was \u201cpainful\u201d for him to revisit the self-censored sections of his own writings. He described these parts as tainted by phrasing that was \u201cdistorted, cramped, andcompressed in an iron vise.\u201d Leaving aside the question of how pre-revolutionary censorship mechanisms were uniquely reproduced after the seizure of power \u2013and their impact on the aesthetic field in the Soviet experience\u2013 it is clear that the \u201callegorical language,\u201d \u201cextreme caution,\u201d and \u201chints\u201d Lenin speaks of will be instrumental in problematizing the dialectic of censorship and self-censorship, as they are symptomatic. In a linguistic landscape shaped by dominant powers, the need to make compromises is ever-present. We must always consider the law and its various sanctions, which continually reshape the phrases we choose to use in discourse. Even the act of expressing something in a \u201clegal\u201d manner is a significant concern \u2013one that affects not only politics but also the arts more broadly, and remains an unresolved issue. Taking a closer look at the functioning of self-censorship in artistic production, without ignoring the relationship between the arts and politics, one can observe a conspicuous force at work: the law.<\/p>\n

Lenin\u2019s experiences with \u201clegality,\u201d referring to the pressure and oppression imposed by the law, exemplify a key aspect of self-censorship. Throughout history and still today, anyone seeking to share a political or artistic message (especially one of dissent or protest) must make a deliberate effort to avoid drawing the attention of the law. Of course, the law is not so incapable that it fails to detect expressions or works built on allegorical language and metaphor, or to piece together hints scattered across a collection of words. But doing so requires a process: legal experts, an army of specialists, and trial procedures \u2013 all of which take time. Not to mention the various lines of public debate that allegorical expressions can spark. It is far more economical to suppress expression at the outset, before it even begins to take shape, by enforcing self-censorship.<\/p>\n

In addition, the law operates to regulate the artist\u2019s imagination \u2013the backbone of aesthetic production\u2013 through various means and tools. Even if concealing expression or clouding meaning is not the only strategy artists develop to avoid the law\u2019s gaze, the use of ambiguous language and tone that shifts a work from clarity to vagueness, furnishing aesthetic undertakings with allegories and metaphors, is quite common. The allegorical language that Lenin rightly criticizes also serves a constructive function, enabling works to partially bypass censorship and ease self-censorship. Not only political thought, but also the history of literature is rich with allegorical and symbolic works, each more valuable than the last. Every climate of oppression gives rise to its own forms of expression. The reason various mechanisms of censorship and self-censorship take shape is to suppress and undermine the fundamental human powers of creation.<\/p>\n

Yet even if creative capacities are diminished and the reserves devoted to aesthetic production are depleted, they do not vanish entirely. Any subject who holds words and experiences they wish to manifest will, in one way or another, find a means to express themselves and release their output into the flow of the world. The ideology of a work is expressed not only in its content but, well before that, in its form. Every work carries a unique spirit as its content, which seeks out its audience \u2013 its readers and viewers. This search is driven by a desire to make an impact, though the nature of that impact cannot be foreseen. Such unpredictability is not something modern governments readily accept. Although power attempts to disable the dynamics of interaction and block channels of communication, it cannot fully impose its will. Uncertainty continues to speak in its own language and with its own character, and the work of art persists in dispersing and distributing its effects.<\/p>\n

Another, and more significant, point to consider about self-censorship is that the law does not simply appear after aesthetic production has taken place; it operates beforehand. To put it more plainly: the law is not external to the subject but internal; it is not out there, but right here. This is where the real crisis takes root. The gaze of the modern state\u2019s law \u2013one that arrests, prosecutes, morally or legally investigates, or convicts through conscience\u2013 has embedded itself deep within the subject\u2019s spiritual mechanisms. It is here, and it is inside. In this context, piercing the armor of self-censorship is not as easy as it might seem. Certain words and expressions, political labels, and even forms of commentary are preemptively claimed by the state \u2013 or at the very least, their risk potential is intuitively grasped, and their usage framed accordingly. The law, which singlehandedly underpins the structures of modern governance \u2013be it totalitarian, theocratic, or the now frequently lamented liberal-democratic form\u2013 appears to pursue a singular aim through its sweeping reach: to extract, in tangible form, the idea embedded within a work that speaks in allusions, dons irony when necessary, and conveys itself through images or metaphors charged with political resonance. And if that distilled idea holds any criminal potential, the law seeks not only to punish the work, but also, inevitably, its creator.<\/p>\n

Every individual work of art \u2013whether a painting or a poem, a piece of contemporary art or a novel or play\u2013 ultimately rests on an idea it seeks to express and make heard. These ideas may support the established order and its political and aesthetic ideology, or they may oppose that order, challenging its functioning and offering visions of an alternative or higher world. Yet whether they align with or stand against the existing order, for modern governments, ideas are always suspect \u2013 persistent problems to be monitored. This is, of course, due to the complex relationship between ideas and action.<\/p>\n

Although thinkers like John Stuart Mill might argue that \u201cno one is persecuted or sanctioned for voicing their opinion because opinions and actions are not the same thing,\u201d modern governments rarely treat the link between opinions and actions as entirely separate. Hobbes, one of the founding figures of modern political thought and state theory, maintains that not only bodies but also ideas must be governed. In this view, to secure complete obedience to authority and to prevent society from rising up in anger, \u201csickly opinions\u201d must be entirely scraped from the social body. But who is to carry out this act of scraping, and on what legitimate grounds? If there are such things as sickly opinions, who decides which opinions are healthy? What is the logic behind the obsessive attitude that modern structures of government assume toward opinions, whether found in a work of art or in a seemingly ordinary piece of writing? It is clear that a destructive concern is at work here. According to Hobbes, actions arise directly from opinions. Opinions are dangerous: they pervert, provoke, disturb, transform, startle, encourage, urge, divide and disperse, gather and unite… Hobbes may have tried to extirpate passion from opinion, to refine thought by stripping it of potentially threatening metaphors and imagery, and thereby erase the action within thought before it could be born \u2013 but is there any government that does not deploy this political technique to subtly consolidate its power? In Hobbes\u2019 view, the ambiguity and distance between opinion and action is erased. This view \u2013still widely accepted and increasingly expanded\u2013 holds, at a deeper level, that having an opinion is already a form of action: the act of thinking.<\/p>\n

If an opinion does not imply action and instead serves to reinforce existing power relations, it is acceptable to sovereign power; if the opposite is true, it becomes a serious inconvenience. The suppression of sickly, ugly, deviant, or disruptive opinions at the political level \u2013and, at times, the use of force to eradicate them at the source (the drowning of expression)\u2013 is one of the hallmarks of modern power relations. The roots of these exclusionary, delimiting modern practices can, of course, be traced back to Plato. Plato sought to banish poets from the polis \u2013that is, from political space\u2013 not because they engaged in the \u201cimitation of ideal forms,\u201d but because they interfered with the law, wielded language maliciously, and subverted established meanings and values. The language of the law sees the language of art as an adversary. When the poet Cemal S\u00fcreya said, \u201cpoetry is against the constitution,\u201d he was attempting to break with this long-standing tradition. Art and governance are not harmonious pursuits, but rather antagonistic practices, sworn never to reconcile. Poetry being \u201cagainst the constitution\u201d is not merely rhetorical flourish; it represents a crystallized form of the historical consciousness of the oppressed. In contrast to legal mechanisms that stigmatize, silence, and dangle death to make disease seem acceptable, art draws its emancipatory potential from the expression of its own libidinal energy…<\/p>\n

With this alarmist apparatus always on guard against opinions, whether in the ancient or modern era, these political regimes that cause a storm in a tea cup, in fact, timidly concede something in the process. Any expression, understood as opinion-action, is a force, a weight, something with impact \u2013 something that not only is shaped by the world but also intervenes in its current operation. Expression is vital to the organization and continuity of social and political life. For Hobbes, determining which ideas may circulate and how \u2013deciding \u201cwho shall examine thedoctrines of all books before they be published\u201d\u2013 and thus defining what is right and what is wrong, ranks among the sovereign\u2019s primary responsibilities. This sacred duty encompasses the arts no less than politics or judicial institutions.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAll the world\u2019s a stage,\u201d said Hobbes\u2019 contemporary William Shakespeare, and like everything else, censorship and self-censorship, too, have their place on this stage. The theater, after all, operates within its own distinct ideal- aesthetic regime \u2013 one that is rich in allegorical and symbolic expression, irony, distortion, and techniques such as trickery, veiled language, double entendre, and a range of performance styles. In the theater, writing itself becomes a stage; and while the writer-subject recedes into the background \u2013eventually disappearing within the dramatic flow and the physical movements of the actors\u2013 it is ultimately the writer who becomes politicized, and whose words carry aesthetic charge. At the same time, theater is a deeply direct and collaborative mode of expression, constantly evolving through the collective contributions of directors, actors, designers, lighting technicians, and even the audience. However, before this collective aspect comes into play, the writer is often alone in the night, navigating the parameters of censorship and self-censorship. Self-censorship affects the playwright just as much as any other artist, and perhaps in different, even more intense ways. Beyond being a tactic for survival, caution becomes a technique that matures over time. The playwright shapes their aesthetic output through hints, imagery, ironic dialogue, and satire when necessary.<\/p>\n

In crafting the birth and structure of words and ideas, they consider not only the moral and normative codes imposed by political power but also the wider social and ethical dimensions. Even when relegated to the background, the writer remains on stage and visible; in fact, they are often the direct target of the modern state\u2019s gaze. For this reason, playwrights or dramaturgs often try to break through the shell of censorship and self-censorship by shifting time and place, relocating their characters to entirely different contexts and coordinates, particularly in works with high potential for political backlash. One of the masters of this art of indirect expression \u2013through twists and spirals, and at times by transforming prose into poetry (poetry being another strategy for navigating self-censorship)\u2013 was, of course, William Shakespeare, whose plays were staged before kings and queens.<\/p>\n

A play on stage can easily provoke a reaction in the moment, whether due to being misunderstood, pushing the limits of expression in its treatment of everyday situations, or most importantly, because opinion and action unfold right there, in realtime, on stage. In the theater, opinions take concrete form not only through letters and words, but also through action \u2013through sound and silence alike. This manifestation follows aesthetic and political lines that shift depending on other contentand effects. In this context, it is not only political thought but also morality that has become a minefield of censorship and self-censorship in the realm of theater.<\/p>\n

The economy of gesture is one of those acts that can easily trigger an explosion in the minefield of morality. Gestures carry significant weight in how the relationship between words and actions is represented on stage and perceived by the audience. For instance, Samuel Beckett was unable to convince a director to accept a stage direction in Waiting for Godot that required Estragon\u2019s belt to come loose, exposing his genitals to the spectators. Such gestures of nudity would have had a morally scandalous impact. Disturbing moral authorities through nudity and sexuality, political authorities through protest or satire, or religious and political powers through religious or ethnic allusions \u2013and thereby provoking backlash in the form of bans, penalties, stage raids, or even lynching practices\u2013 is the hard and thorny path that theater often must walk. Even if a playwright imagines their speech freely, they may still feel compelled to trim it back under the pressure of the broader social dynamics that surround the stage. Overcoming the censorship and self-censorship mechanisms \u2013forms of theatrical self-castration\u2013 or at least softening their grip, depends on the wider condition of \u201cfreedom of expression\u201d and the presence, development, and richness of the rights that sustain it.<\/p>\n

As the most intense manifestation of the link between opinion and action, theatre\u2014from playwriting to staging\u2014has always drawn the attention of sovereign powers and been subject to their sanctions and restrictions.<\/p>\n

The theatre, though it may have stuttered at times under the weight of censorship and self-censorship, is a form of resistance that has transformed stuttering itself into a mode of expression. Unlike Mill\u2019s ideal of a disconnection between opinion and action, this form of resistance embraces and stages the specific forms of action embedded in every expression, conveying to the audience the audible and even visible dimensions of opinion. In this sense, theatre is a thoroughly public activity. That is precisely why it becomes a target for overt or covert interventions: trimming, silencing, and isolation. Any opinion voiced in the theatre, whether to be debated, refuted, or reaffirmed, acquires a public depth and a political dimension. Marx wrote that \u201conce the idea finds its object, it is just a matter of time before all qualitiesof human existence acquire transformative power.\u201d In this light, both playwriting and staging go beyond the formal understanding of \u201cfreedom of expression\u201d espoused by ruling classes, due to their inherently public and political structure. If all the world is indeed astage, then stepping onto it \u2013becoming visible\u2013 and stepping off it \u2013disappearing\u2013 both require the possibility ofmovement and change. Mechanisms of censorship and self-censorship serve as legal and moral valves designed to block such movement and change (on whatever grounds), aiming to seize control of the stage and regulate the acts of seeing and being seen. It would not be an exaggeration to say that today, one word stands out as the most frequently invoked \u2013and most urgently in need of critical scrutiny\u2013 obstacle to opinions and their expression, often cited to justify self- censorship: terrorism. This plastic, amphibious word loaded with impact and functioning like a skeleton key has infiltrated both legal and moral domains, as well as all kinds of discourse, including that surrounding the theater.<\/p>\n

It has permeated fields of political and aesthetic speech and now looms before the problem of expression like a wall of ice. For political regimes, this magic word is also a cornerstone of self-censorship: expressions like \u201cpen-wielding terrorists\u201dhave taken root in everyday language, while \u201ccounter-terrorism\u201d jokes and practices have encircled the human mind and subconscious.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

The vision of a democratic society can accommodate neither censorship nor self-censorship, because expression \u2013as a definingfeature of being human\u2013 encompasses all forms of sensation and even instinct. History has shown that environments where sound is condemned to silence and speech to muteness tend to yield nothing but sudden, fiery outbursts and destructive upheavals. Humans are thinking and social beings who express their thoughts to others. Scandals, sensationalism, provocations, and shocks are as intrinsic to opinion as they are to art. Attempting to sort, classify, or rehabilitate thought by clamping down on the force of opinion \u2013by turning human truths into rigid \u201cnorms\u201d and demanding total obedience\u2013 is not only futile, but such governmental practices tend to produce even graver consequences. The image of a democratic society in which no one is forced into silence, where no one faces legal or moral trials for expressing an opinion, and where people do not flinch at theidea of action, remains the utopian horizon of the struggle for freedom \u2013 even if today, this elegant and enduring horizon may be in chains.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Lenin, Selected Works, Moskow: Progress Publishers, 1963.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 p. 118-119. (A new Turkish translation of this book by Utku \u00d6zmakas and Ferit Burak Aydar is forthcoming from \u0130\u015f-K\u00fclt\u00fcr Publications.)<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

[3] Tan\u0131l Bora, \u201cTer\u00f6rs\u00fcz T\u00fcrkiye,\u201d Birikim Haftal\u0131k, https:\/\/birikimdergisi.com\/haftalik\/11986\/terorsuz-turkiye<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Overcoming the censorship and self-censorship mechanisms \u2013forms of theatrical self-castration\u2013 or at least softening their grip, depends on the wider condition of \u201cfreedom of expression\u201d and the presence, development, and richness of the rights that sustain it”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1561,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2754],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susma24.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susma24.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susma24.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susma24.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susma24.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1547"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/susma24.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1565,"href":"https:\/\/susma24.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions\/1565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susma24.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susma24.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susma24.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susma24.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}