> chaz wrote:
>
> >Yes, Marx is making part of the liberal analysis on this. The U.S. Supreme
> Court Justice Brandeis used the metaphor of releasing noxious doctrine to
> the light of day rather than burying it. This is the metaphor of mold,
> which grows out of the sun and dies in the sun.<
>
> i don't think so. marx argued that censorship makes what is censored
> apprear mystical and important. in our language, desirable. this is quite
> different to a liberal conception of the law i would think which assumes
> rational discussion hence the need to bring reason to bear 'in the light of
> day'. ie., liberalism assumes that laws negate, stop x from happening.
> hence the liberal idea of minimising laws in order to attain the most
> freedoms. marx's argument is quite different. laws which seek to negate x
> are in fact productive, positive. this is why, once again, i think marx's
> arguments need to be taken seriously if the intention is to limit and do
> away with hate speech.
I think a good example of this was illustrated in the first episode of Channel 4's documentary on pornography ('Pornography: the secret history of civilisation'), which dealt with the way the response of Victorian 'men of learning' to the discovery of erotic art at Pompei and in other archealogical investigations. The result was the coining of a new word - pornography - and the establishment of a nexus of discussion around the contents of the 'secret museums' (in Naples and in the British Museum). The attempt to partition off 'pornography', the entry of the 'obscene' into the censorship laws, established both a negative - 'no pornography!' and a positive - the fascination with pornography - which still dominate the modern Western understanding of the representation of sex.
Anyone in the UK: The next episode of the documentary is on today at 10pm on Channel 4. And before that (at 9pm) is Tony's People, the documentary on Tony Blair's constituency, which illustrates just what it means to be a good citizen in Tony Blair's Britain (to give you an idea - from last week's program - evictions from council houses are up 13% since Blair came into office).
Peter -- Peter van Heusden : pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk : PGP key available Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower. - Karl Marx
NOTE: I do not speak for the HGMP or the MRC.