Dear Friends,
Please consider signing onto this statement, initiated by
the National Coalition Against Censorship in response to a
series of recent events involving conceptual poet Vanessa
Place. The deadline for signing on is 10am Tuesday, June 23.
Please send your name, profession, and institutional
affiliation to kentaro@ncac.org
As you may be aware, social media attacks on Vanessa
Place’s Gone With the Wind re-tweeting project have led
various cultural institutions to remove her from a
conference committee, cancel a discussion panel and even a
whole conference. (The statement gives more details and you
can find additional information here: http://lareviewofbooks.org/
The statement is aimed as a critique of the failure of
cultural institutions to respond adequately to real
controversies around difficult subject matter. It also
intends to break the prevailing silence around the
cancellations.
This is just the beginning of what we believe should be a
continuing conversation. The Vanessa Place controversy
provides an opportunity to deal with urgent issues facing us
today: to re-evaluate often-less-than-thoughtful online
clicktivism, the flash attack mobs mobilized by change.org
type of structures, which provide the quick gratification of
engagement at the expense of evaluating and thinking about
issues in complex or nuanced ways; to negotiate how cultural
institutions deal with attempts at silencing coming from
groups whose mission is socially valuable, but whose tactics
are sometimes problematic; and finally, to confront the
urgency of really – and not just rhetorically - opening up
our institutional echo-chambers to debate and dissensus.
Please see full text below.
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U.S. cultural institutions have a critical role in
maintaining the openness of social and political debate.
That role is threatened when those institutions fail to take
on real controversies around difficult subject matter.
A disturbing example involves the conceptual poet Vanessa
Place, whose long-running project tweeting the full text of
Gone with the Wind has become the object of virulent
criticism, mostly conducted through social media. An
anonymous online group led the charge, calling the project
"at best, startlingly racially insensitive, and, at worst,
racist." The same group has also attacked those they see as
defending Place.
Ever since the attacks started in early May, in the midst
of the controversy and the pressures from the protesters,
various cultural institutions have opted or been forced to
remove Vanessa Place from a conference committee, cancel a
discussion panel and even a whole conference – to the
effect of imposing a silence where the only voices heard are
those who attack the project and its author.
On May 18, the Association of Writers & Writing
Programs (AWP) acceded to the demands of the anonymous group
and a related petition and decided to remove Place from a
subcommittee that reviews applications for their annual
conference. Paradoxically reiterating their commitment to
freedom of expression, the AWP justified the removal as an
effort to "to protect the efficacy of the conference
subcommittee's work," which they claimed would be
compromised by the need to manage the controversy.
Then on May 29, the Berkeley Poetry Conference, which had
refused demands to banish Place from the program, scrapped
their entire event, citing the withdrawal of a number of the
other participants. And on June 6, the Whitney Museum in New
York canceled a public program on the subject of the death
penalty featuring Place along with philosophers Kyoo Lee and
Avital Ronell. The organizers were unable to determine how
to secure the integrity of the program in the context of the
controversy.
Those protesting have expressed little interest in
engaging in a debate about Place's work; their aim has been
to banish her entirely from cultural institutions. While
they are free to critique and protest an art project, as it
is part of the give and take of a democratic culture – for
cultural institutions to, in effect, blacklist its author
and give in to online attacks from anonymous sources
threatens our collective interest in maintaining a vital
public sphere.
The cultural atmosphere evidenced by the events around
Vanessa Place is chilling to any creative artist or
institution that may consider approaching difficult
questions around race, sexuality or politics. It makes real
debate about emotionally charged issues over which we often
disagree nearly impossible. Unless they are prepared to
welcome conflict and disagreement, cultural institutions
will operate as echo chambers under the pall of a fearful
consensus, rather than leaders in a vibrant and agonistic
public sphere.
Not only is silencing and suppression dangerous for the
culture at large, it does nothing to confront the realities
of racism. Censorship has never contributed to the cause of
social justice; throughout history it has invariably been on
the side of totalitarianism and repression. But in the echo
chambers of easy consensus, this lesson is very easily
forgotten.
--
K E N T A R O • I K E G A M I
Arts Advocacy Program Manager
National Coalition Against Censorship
19 Fulton Street Ste 407
New York, NY 10038
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