Spain’s protest movement failed to achieve anything worthwhile. The same party of austerity is in power, and its leadership is as proud of austerity measures as ever. Protest movements have failed in all countries of advanced consumerism because consumers make for disengaged, indifferent citizens.
You’ve all heard me say this before but the reason why I’m repeating it is that I can’t say this in my research. In Humanities, we have a severe censorship that doesn’t allow us to depart from the accepted line of thought on many issues. For instance, anything that departs even a bit from a complete, slavish idealization of protest movements (refugees, ETA, Catalan independence seekers, etc) is censored out.
Maybe one can publish something a bit diverging from the party line in Spain if one finds an ideologically less leftist academic journal. Maybe one can publish something like this in the UK if one finds a quirky editor. On this continent, however, this options don’t exist.
The censorship exists because people are sincerely convinced that questioning the party line and saying, even in a casual conversation, things like “Don Quixote is a work of art and Justin Bieber’s songs aren’t” or “there is a lot more sexism in Latin America than in the US” cannot possibly come from a place of reason. I saw a group of academics flatly refuse to accept the story of a colleague who had lived in the Basque Country and experienced terror because of ETA’s activities. The accepted line is that the etarras walk on water and evil Civil Guards unfairly victimize them. Good luck to that colleague with publishing her research on the subject in North America.
Clarissa's Blog 
The censorship exists because people are sincerely convinced that questioning the party line and saying, even in a casual conversation, things like “Don Quixote is a work of art and Justin Bieber’s songs aren’t” or “there is a lot more sexism in Latin America than in the US” cannot possibly come from a place of reason
Does adding all kinds of qualifiers & hedging in response count as censorship? I’m not sure how much full bore analysis can be brought to Bieber songs, as opposed to click-bait think-pieces. As for Latin America, how many of these people have lived in both Latin America & the US?
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It’s worse than that. Simply not mentioning the darn protest movements is not acceptable either. My book is literary criticism. It’s called Literature of the Crisis. That’s the title. That’s what the book is about. But the main criticism of the book is that it doesn’t dedicate enough attention to the protest movements. Which are not my subject. But I have to praise them to the skies because that’s what we are about right now.
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There’s a point at which it becomes subject drift. How narrow is a monograph supposed to be? Protest literature or really any literature with an explicit message to be pounded into one’s head tends to be didactic and hamfisted, because subtlety flies over most readers’ heads, and most writers suck at satire.
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Exactly! But now I have to answer the question of “Why do you privilege literature in your research?”
Hmm. . . Maybe because it’s my profession?
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slightinly adapting what you wrote, just keep repeating the main point forever if necessary.
Stupid head-in-ass-clouds person: Why do you privilege literature in your research?
Clarissa: Because Spain’s protest movement failed to achieve anything . The same party of austerity is in power, and its leadership is as proud of austerity measures as ever.
Stupid head-in-ass-clouds person: How can you say that?!
Clarissa: Their aim was to overthrow austeritiy. But the same party of austerity is in power, and its leadership is as proud of austerity measures as ever. Can you name anything concrete that they achieved?
Stupid head-in-ass-clouds person: The activism…
Clarissa: It didn’t work . The same party of austerity is in power, and its leadership is as proud of austerity measures as ever.
Stupid head-in-ass-clouds person: They organized…
Clarissa: It didn’t work . The same party of austerity is in power, and its leadership is as proud of austerity measures as ever.
repeat until they get the message
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Fuck, man, where you there??? Cause this is uncanny.
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Solidarity from Kurdistan. A lot of my work is published in Germany, Turkey, and other places outside the US for this very reason. Out of the four pieces mentioned in the post below only one had a US publishers.
http://jpohl.blogspot.com/2016/11/my-articles-dealing-with-africa.html
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I was thinking of you when I wrote the post because you are a shining example of where this mentality leads. It is shameful what was done to you for no other reason than ideology.
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Dr. Pohl also maintains he was denied a job in American academia because of the Stalinists–his term–in said academia.
If you believe that……….
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Off-topic, but what do you think about this?
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-aa6a-Ukraine-Appointment-of-neonazi-police-chief-sparks-fury#.WCyiSNAS-f0
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Don’t pay attention. Russian propaganda at its silliest.
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Let’s say you find a publisher (there are micropresses that specialize in nonfiction, or you can hire an editor and a cover designer and just self-publish) and you write the book you would actually want to write without fear of censorship. Would the fact that these ideas that go against the grain now exist as a book with your name on it then damage your prospects of later publishing?
I guess I am trying to understand how severe the censorship is — is it just that publishers don’t want to get involved (which could be circumvented in principle) or that your professional reputation will be destroyed by writing dissenting work?
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” how severe the censorship is”
It sounds less like censorship than a bunch of second-rate closed minds that refuse to face reality when it displeases them.
The result is much the same….
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Yeah, good question. The answer is that I get to be super extra careful and introduce my ideas very much on the sly because the echo chamber hates outsiders.
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