Issue 28 | Fall 2024
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Call for Papers: Special Issue on Censorship and Dissent in Art and Academia
It has been typical for western commentators to associate authoritarianism primarily with countries like Iran, China, Russia, North Korea and Saudi Arabia. However, the past fifteen years have witnessed the dramatic expansion of authoritarian political movements across the globe, from Trump and MAGA in the U.S., to Erdogan in Turkey, to Orban in Hungary, to Netanyahu in Israel and beyond. These regimes are defined by their close alignment with theocratic and fundamentalist religion and their shared disdain for the conventional features of liberal democracy, including the separation of church and state, government regulation of the private sector, freedom of speech, an impartial judiciary and free elections. The central ideological mechanism that allows many of these regimes to retain power entails a populist, and often neo-fascist, appeal to a monolithic national identity that is endangered by “foreign” elements (Trump’s attack on immigrants “poisoning the blood” of America, Netanyahu’s reduction of the entire population of Gaza to the category of “terrorist,” Orban’s specter of “racial mixing,” etc.). They survive, then, only by continually ratcheting up public revulsion against an abject Other, whose very abjection sanctions their violent destruction. Typically, this other is constructed along lines of racial or ethnic difference from a perceived white or European norm. In the U.S., specifically, this has entailed overt linkages between the Republican party, white supremacists and neo-Nazis. We saw constant reminders of this during the past few years, from right wing attacks on the Biden administration for featuring African American tap dancers in a Whitehouse Christmas pageant, to Nikki Haley’s refusal to identify slavery as a root cause of the Civil War, to Trump’s hosting of white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes at Mar a Lago.
In order to maintain their hold on power these regimes seek to quash open debate in the public sphere that might challenge their legitimacy, both by subverting conventional standards of truthful or factual information (evident in Facebook and X suspending content moderation and disinformation filters) and by actively repressing dissenting opinions. This latter tendency is evident in Donald Trump’s calculated attacks on the “lamestream media,” which led to the anticipatory subordination of major corporations and social media platforms over the past year, as well as the capitulation of journalistic independence at publications such as The Washington Post (under Jeff Bezos) and the Los Angeles Times (under Chinese billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong). A second key target is higher education. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has documented almost sixty bills currently being considered across 23 states, funded by wealthy far right activists, as part of what it calls a “coordinated attacked against public colleges and universities” intended to eliminate any program that openly acknowledges ongoing forms of racial or sexual oppression. [1] The artworld is hardly immune to these pressures, as evidenced by the recent firing of David Velasco, Artforum’s Editor-in-Chief, for publishing an open letter in support of a cease-fire in Gaza, following complaints by a group of wealthy art collectors. Artforum is owned by the son of Trump donor Roger Penske. [2]
The fact that Gaza, in particular, was the catalyst for Velasco’s dismissal is symptomatic. Given the extreme nature of conservative attacks on free speech and dissent, it’s been necessary to manufacture outrage around certain events or points of conflict which lend themselves to a process of discursive flattening, in which all historical or situational complexity is effaced, leaving only a crude binary opposition between good and evil to justify what is really an unprecedented assault on American traditions of academic freedom. Thus, the moral panic that was engineered around student protests against the Gaza genocide allowed conservatives to justify the imposition of draconian new limits on free speech on college campuses, override existing policies regarding the use of off-campus police forces, intimidate university administrators, and further intrench a demonizing portrayal of Palestinians. Here the strategic collapse of Jewish ethno-religious identity into the political eidos of Israel as a nuclear nation state facilitated a deliberate weaponization of charges of antisemitism, such that any criticism of IDF military actions in Gaza could simply be dismissed as tantamount to an endorsement of the Holocaust. This gesture, which was also embraced by elements within the Democratic party, is all the more troubling because it threatens to invalidate and trivialize critiques of actually existing antisemitism that pose a real threat. [3]
With the re-election of convicted felon and rapist Donald Trump we have entered a period of neo-McCarthyism in the United States defined by an evolving and often inchoate amalgam of state enemies. Here communism (a charge levelled, explicably, by Trump against his many critics) is joined by attacks on sexual and gender diversity, the “woke mind virus,” DEI initiatives, and protests against climate change, racial injustice, class inequality, and geo-political issues such as Palestine. In tandem with an ongoing series of essays commissioned by Greg Sholette exploring the global expansion of authoritarian rule, FIELD is also seeking essays, interviews, case studies and other reflections that focus on the specific forms of censorship currently unfolding on U.S. campuses and across the broader artworld. Topics might include:
• Experiences of censorship within academic departments and from university administrators or state agencies, intended to restrict the teaching of material related to specific forms of social or political repression or resistance (artistic, cultural or otherwise), or which critique existing forms of political domination.
• New pedagogical interventions for teaching controversial material (including forms of activist artistic or cultural production), or for preserving spaces for creative dissent, within the increasing restrictive ideological environment of academia or the institutional artworld.
• Experiences of censorship encountered in artworld settings, including galleries, museums, art fairs, biennials and art schools, as well as creative responses to efforts to censor or marginalize critical practices within artworld settings.
We are open to either shorter reflections (1000-1500 words) or longer essays (3000-6000). Submit proposals and queries to: fieldjournal1@gmail.com
• Deadline for Proposals: March 10, 2025
FIELD is available at: www.field-journal.com.
Notes
1. Attacks on higher education are the logical extension of previous right-wing attacks on public schools and libraries. They are part of a more general drive to eliminate any form of public provision that offers an alternative to the market system, a process which began with the Republican “Culture War” attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts during the 1990s. They are also consistent with the “Seven Mountains Mandate” of Christian dominionists who seek to transform the U.S. into a Christian theocracy (the “Seven Mountains” refer to the domains of family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government, which will be taken over by Christian nationalists). Much of this work is being funded by right wing billionaires.
See: Issac Kamola, “The Right-Wing Attacks on Higher Education: An Analysis of State Legislative Action,” American Association of University Professors (2023).
https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/Higher-Ed-Legislative-Landscape.pdf
See: Paul A. Djupe, “Belief in the 7 Mountain Mandate Appears to be Growing in the Last Year,” Religion in Public (May 13, 2024).
https://religioninpublic.blog/2024/05/13/belief-in-the-7-mountain-mandate-appears-to-be-growing-in-the-last-year/
2. The mapping of authoritarianism onto individual political parties is not entirely straightforward, of course, as evidenced by the Biden administration’s reprehensible compliance with Netanyahu’s drive to annex Gaza and engage in the mass slaughter of its civilian population.
See: Jeet Heer, “The High Cost of Biden’s Policy of Unconditional Support for Israel,” The Nation (October 11, 20204).
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/biden-israel-policy-disaster/
See: Alex N. Press, “Artforum’s Editor Just Got Axed After Printing a Letter Opposing Israel’s Assault on Gaza,” Jacobin (October 27, 2023).
Artforum’s publishers wrote a statement last night saying that Velasco violated the magazine’s standard editorial process, but reporting shows that the ouster followed campaigning by advertisers and art collectors who objected to the letter. As the Intercept writes, shortly after Artforum put up the letter, “Martin Eisenberg, a high-profile collector and inheritor of the now-bankrupt Bed Bath & Beyond fortune, began contacting famous art world figures on the list whose work he had championed to express his objections.” He was aided by influential gallery owners, whose response Artforum published, as well as by another letter, which fails to mention Palestinian deaths and garnered thousands of signatures, including from tear-gas salesman and art world figure Warren Kanders. At least one Artforum staff member resigned today in response to Velasco’s firing.
Also see: Daniel Boguslaw and Natasha Leonard, “Bed Bath and Beyond Scion Pressured Artists to Retract Gaza Ceasefire Call in Artforum Letter,” The Intercept (October 26, 2023).
https://theintercept.com/2023/10/26/artforum-artists-gaza-ceasefire-martin-eisenberg/
Also see: Hannah Bouattia, “2024 was a year of anti-Palestine censorship and active art rebellion,” Al Jazeera (December 30, 2024).
3. Not the least of which are those fomented by Trump’s primary supporters among the American neo-Nazi movement. The irony that this process is unfolding in conjunction with the global rise of actual neo-fascism has not gone unnoticed in Israel itself, but Netanyahu, like Trump, has insured the acquiescence of Israeli media, most recently by banning Haaretz, which has been critical of the Gaza invasion and pointed out the inconvenient truth that Netanyahu himself provided funding for Hamas in order to marginalize moderate political factions in Palestine who might have been more successful advocates for a two-state solution.
See: Tom Dickinson, “Literal Neo-Nazi Leader Endorses Trump,” Rolling Stone (November 5, 2024).
See: Rita Katz, “I tracked anti-Jewish extremism for 25 years. Reelecting Trump will make it worse,” Forward (October 21, 2024).
https://forward.com/opinion/666250/antisemitism-trump-2024-election-hate-online/
See: “Israeli government sanctions Haaretez, severs all ties,” Middle East Eye (November 24, 2024).
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-government-sanctions-haaretz-severs-all-ties
See: Elaine Kamarck, Anna Heetderks and Emily Rusting, “How deep is the divide among Democrats over Israel?.” The Brookings Institute (June 27, 2024).
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-deep-is-the-divide-among-democrats-over-israel/
See: Tal Schneider, “For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces,” The Times of Israel (October 8, 2023).
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/