[Reader-list] On Free Speech

[pratap pandey]

Dear all,

vis-a-vis Shuddha's usual brilliant insights, what
about laughter?

In his schema for free speech, there is no place for
even a snigger.

Is laughter a responsible...what? emotion? reaction?
cause? effect? Laughter is a responsible...what?

The problem, that Shuddha's write-up eminently
displays, is that laughter is considered to be outside
the realm of "talk". It is considered an onomatopoeic
experience. As such, it is a rhetorical experience. It
is merely a rhetorical, and by extension, a
not-meta-physical experience. Laughter is a perception
that exists outside the supreme centre of Perception:
the "mind".

One "dissolves" in laughter. One "breaks out" in
laughter. One "helplessly" laughs. One
"uncontrollably" laughs.

Laughter exists outside "free speech". "Speech",
however "free", cannot by its nature countenance
laughter, for laughter signals a different perceptual
regime.

A different perceptual regime, not a less responsible
one.

Is this why it is difficult to write satire?

pp

    




--- Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha at sarai.net> wrote: >
Dear all on the Readers List,
> 
> I have been following with some interest the textual
> duel between the learned 
> professors Pandey and Saint, and find myself in
> sympathy with Neel  (or is it 
> Slumbug) who says,
> 
> "but I hope we all talk, at least some of you will
> with me, so that my 
> ‘doubts’ as to what really constitutes freedom, the
> civil society...
> much more could get a little clarified. "
> 
> And I am totally in agreement with Monica who has
> pointed out that free 
> speech brings with itself its own set of
> responsibilites. 
> 
> Although I have  found the learned Professor
> Pandey's tone a tad strident on 
> occasion, I do not agree that a statement that some
> may consider offensive is 
> sufficient reason for anyone to be asked to leave or
> lapse into silence. A 
> caveat, it is equally important, as Monica has
> pointed out, that we take the 
> task of writing seriously, and do not make any
> flippantly personal remarks, 
> especially about people who are not in a position to
> respond because they are 
> not on the list...
> 
> There have been earlier debats, or hints of a
> debate, on speech, silence, and 
> the valuation of speech. I remember , in the wake of
> my posting in the first 
> week of March on Arundhati Roy's conviction for
> contempt of court, Pradip 
> Saha asking whether free speech was more important
> than access to water, and 
> Joy Chatterjee asking about the value of silence.
> Later, when the silence on 
> the list prompted Gayatri Chatterjee to ask us all
> to reflect on why we were 
> silence, the same questions returned again.
> 
> Clearly, March is the month for thinking about Free
> Speech.
> 
> And so, I have tried to summarize some of my
> thoughts about what it means to 
> speak freely. This is in the form of an essay that
> is to be published 
> elsewhere, but I would like to post this for all
> your responses and I hope, 
> freely offered criticisms. It is kind of long, so
> please be patient and read 
> till the end.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Shuddha
>
_____________________________________________________________
> On the Freedom to Speak the Things that Cannot be
> Said Easily 
> Shuddhabrata Sengupta
> 
> I would like to speak of a few things that cannot be
> said easily.
> 
> A society that proscribes and censors audio-visual
> and written material, bans 
> books and publications, that blocks television
> channels, removes works of art 
> from galleries, prohibits or limits free
> broadcasting on radio, that rubber 
> stamps maps and atlases and sends writers to prison
> for their writing, even 
> if for a day, is not a free society. 
> 
> A society that has laws that provide for the
> interception of private 
> communications, that can send people to jail for
> distributing or reproducing  
> cultural materials without thought of pecuniary
> gain, that guarantees no 
> effective privacy for individuals through
> sophisticated mechanisms of 
> surveillance and at the same time veils the actions
> of the state and of 
> corporations behind the impregnable curtains of
> official secrecy, is not a 
> free society.
> 
> A society that criminalizes the right to remain
> silent, even as it confers on 
> to confessions extracted in police custody the
> status of evidence in law on 
> the pretext of fighting terrorism, is not a free
> society. 
> 
> A society that polices spaces where people exchange
> news or communicate with 
> each other in their personal capacities, that allows
> for the planting of 
> officially sanctioned dis-information in the media,
> that blurs the line 
> between editorials, public relations and propaganda,
> that rewrites history to 
> suit a sectarian agenda, that conducts raids on
> libraries and schools to find 
> if there are objectionable and pirated materials
> available, that requires 
> dramatic performances to have prior police
> permission, and that places 
> informers in institutions of higher learning to 
> watch what people say or 
> read or watch or listen to, is not a free society.
> 
> A society that needs to generate endless
> justifications for restrictions on 
> the freedom of speech and the right to information
> in the name of national 
> security, the war against terrorism, public order,
> decency or morality, is 
> not a free society. 
> 
> Such a society treats its members as if they were
> all children, or imbeciles, 
> or both. It confers on to a select few, an elite,
> immense powers to determine 
> what may or may not be viewed, read, or said. It
> effectively curtails the 
> entire domain of cultural and intellectual life by
> placing around it a 
> plethora of restrictions, and encourages artists and
> intellectuals to succumb 
> to the temptation of seeking the patronage of wealth
> and power as the sole 
> means of pursuing their vocations. It then ratifies
> all this with regular and 
> manipulated electoral excercises, which lends to an
> effective 
> authoritarianism the benign cloak of popular
> legitimacy. 
> 
> In such societies, riots, mobilization for war, the
> minute dissection of what 
> women should or should not wear, and of the honour
> and the dignity of the 
> nation take precedence over the pressing concerns of
> everyday existence. In 
> such societies, the 'sentiments of communities' or
> of the 'nation',  are 
> worth more than human life. Such societies hedge on
> ratifying international 
> conventions on land mines and torture, because no
> one really talks about land 
> mines and torture. In such societies, the
> engineering of dams, the radiation 
> levels in nuclear power plants and uranium mines,
> and the arcana of the 
> public food distribution system remain state
> secrets, even when people are 
> displaced by dams, get cancer from radiation and die
> of starvation. In such 
> societies, environmental activists, laid-off, or
> striking workers, civil 
> libertarians and average, ordinary citizens get
> accustomed to preventive 
> detention, harassment, surveillance, torture, and
> disappearances.
> 
> Does any of this sound even remotely familiar? 
> 
> The above description would work for a large number
> of countries in the world 
> today, it would of course have worked for the
> ex-Soviet Union from the 1930s 
> until its demise, and for many respectable Latin
> American military 
> dictatorships, but it is equally applicable (in
> large measure) to, the 
> leaders and the motley led in the current
> international coalition against 
> terror. In its entirety, the above description is
> applicable to the current 
> state of social, political and cultural discourse in
> the Republic of India.
> 
> We are not living in a free society. A battery of
> laws, (from the first 
> amendment to the Indian Constitution restricting
> freedom of expression as 
> read in Article 19  on the grounds of public order
> onwards) and a variety of 
> constitutional and extra-constitutional
> arrangements, as well as the routine 
> methods of operation of state and powerful non-state
> actors on the ground 
> 
=== message truncated === 

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