Speaking, not to mention writing, involves navigating a minefield of social conventions, taboos, permissions and restrictions. This seminar examines literary examples of speech being filtered, hindered, reshaped, banned or edited. The topics covered include self-censorship, book burnings, literary bans and the editorial omission of obscenity. Combining historical and literary approaches, the seminar will explore the various ways in which discourse is shaped and reshaped to conform to implicit and explicit social rules. It also examines literary works that articulate the risks of speaking out against power and the various tools they used to speak without speaking, as well as instances in which power has loosened its grip slightly in order to distract, repress and silence. Like the assembled cuts at the end of Cinema Paradiso, the seminar attempts to piece together the scattered fragments of omitted scenes and instances of literature to ask: is the act of censorship always the same across history and geography? What insights do we gain from accessing the omitted? Is all censorship bad, or does it have a positive side too?
Reading material:
Allan, Keith and Burridge, Kate. Forbidden Words: Taboo and Censorship of Language, Cambridge University, 2006.
Draz, Céza Kassem. “In Quest of New Narrative Forms: Irony in the Works of Four Egyptian Writers: Jamal al-Ghiṭani, Yaḥya al-Ṭahir ʿAbdallah, Majid Ṭubya, Ṣunʿallah Ibrahim (1967-1979),” Journal of Arabic Literature, Vol. 12 (1981), pp. 137-159.
al-Ghitani, Gamal. Zayni Barakat, trans. Farouk Abdel Wahab.
Mahfouz, Najib. Karnak Café, trans. Roger Allen.
Mahfouz, Najib. Children of Gebalawi, Three Continent Press, 1988.
Munif, Abdul Rahman. East of the Mediterranean.
al-Qaḍi, Wadad. “Scholars and Their Books: A Peculiar Islamic View from the Fifth/Eleventh Century,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 124, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 2004), 627-640.
Ṭubia, Majid. al-Haʾulaʾ.
Zayyud, al-Manubi. Muḥakamat al-fikr wa-l-ibdaʿ [Trials against Thought and Creativity]
- Lehrende/r: Asmaa Essakouti