WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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Free speech is not the norm, and even in a country that explicitly protects speech in its foundational documents, censorship can still creep into our lives in unexpected ways.
On this election night, “Selling Censorship,” another episode in our series The Way of Neoliberalism, about our current cultural environment that dominates our society, politics, and our interactions with each other.
Tonight we’re speaking with David Bromwich, Sterling Professor of English at Yale University and author of a recent article in the London Review of Books called “What are we allowed to say?” In it, he reminds readers that a society without censorship is not the historical norm, and cautions us to watch for the new ways in which open dialogue is being cut down, and self-censorship promoted.
SEGMENT ONE
Definitions – John Stuart Mill and the concept of free speech as simply a proscription against censorship – and ideas about how a “society of manners” can disapprove of undesirable speech, while still allowing it to be free. One paradox of note is that built into the 1st amendment of the US Constitution is an inherent tension in protecting one’s right to be dogmatic and censorious in one’s religious beliefs, and the enshrinement of the right be critical of those very institutions and beliefs, and in a way creating the foundation for the Orwellian concept of doublethink.
SEGMENT TWO
What are we allowed to say if we may accidentally offend someone at any moment — and through the bureaucratization of manners in ‘Microaggressions’– that momentary offence is enough to end any dialogue? And what is worth saying, if all the voices in our personal little algorithmically-chosen virtual communities are all saying the same thing?
SEGMENT THREE
From our national nightmare of an election, through the story of UC Berkeley’s anti-speech changes in the 50 years since the impassioned speech of Mario Savio and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964, to the recent controversy in Bloomington North High School (Indiana) over students brandishing the confederate flag, and its ‘resolution,’ the banning of all such displays, which Bromwich feels will only result in more self-righteous isolation on both sides (and probably litigation) — we see the consequences of choosing comfort over genuine, albeit sometimes discordant, dialogue.
GUEST
David Bromwich is the Sterling Professor of English at Yale University. His most recent books are The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke: From the Sublime and Beautiful to American Independence (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014), and Moral Imagination: Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).
RELATED
“What Are We Allowed to Say?” by David Bromwich
THE WAY OF NEOLIBERALISM
Selling Me, Inc.: Part Three of The Way of Neoliberalism
Selling Ignorance: Part Two of the Way of Neoliberalism
Selling Democracy: Part One of The Way of Neoliberalism
MUSIC
“Free Speech” by Eddie Harris
“Not Ready to Make Nice” by The Dixie Chicks
“Freedom of Choice” by Devo
“Freedom Sound” by The Jazz Contenders
NEXT UP
Selling Happiness: Part Five of The Way of Neoliberalism
Happiness has become the biggest idea of our age, a new religion dedicated to well-being. Political economist Will Davies shows how this philosophy, first pronounced by Jeremy Bentham in the 1780s, has dominated the political debates that have delivered neoliberalism. From a history of business strategies of how to get the best out of employees, to the increased level of surveillance measuring every aspect of our lives; The Happiness Industry is an essential guide to the marketization of modern life. Get out your hip high bootstraps, because the science of happiness is less a science than a narrative extension of hyper-capitalism.
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Assistant Producer & Editor: Rob Schoon
Board Engineer: Jennifer Brooks
Executive Producer: Joe Crawford
