Censorium

William Mazzarella is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India, also published by Duke University Press, and coeditor (with Raminder Kaur) of Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation From Sedition to Seduction.

"As a system of regulation behind mass publicity, censorship stands at a scholarly impasse, often arbitrary in its exercise and yet seemingly consensual in its popular outcomes. William Mazzarella fills major lacunae in the existing literature on censorship by his incisive analysis of the cultural forms of censorship across colonial and postcolonial periods. This is an important addition to the anthropology of media and globalization in South Asia."-Arvind Rajagopal, author of Politics after Television: Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India "In Censorium, William Mazzarella demonstrates that censorship is integral to the performance of sovereignty and the constitution of 'mass-publics' in socially diverse and mass-mediated societies. His incisive and immensely suggestive book is destined to become a standard reference in film studies, media studies, and the anthropology of the state."-Thomas Blom Hansen, author of Melancholia of Freedom: Social Life in an Indian Township in South Africa “This book is eminently readable and the arguments are easily accessible…. [S]o much of the density of the theoretical arguments that it resorts to are softened through such tender and accessible language that doesn’t for a moment appear to moralize or sermonize even when the author is forced to take up sensitive issues of culture, class, gender and morality…. Censorium is at once a documentary on censorship and a theoretical space for hair-splitting analyses.” - Usha V.T. (The Hindu) "This book, which lies at the intersection of anthropology and meida studies, is a path-breaking analysis of censorship in the Indian film industry." - Rohit K. Dasgupta (Asian Affairs) "The book’s stage is cinema, but it helps us understand how dominant caste groups have been so effective in mobilising support for informal bans such as on writer Perumal Murugan’s Mathorubagan, till the courts’ defence of the writer’s right to write. Mazzarella’s exploration of India’s engagement with censorship begins during British rule, and shows how restrictions on free speech got enshrined in the Constitution. The legal framework of censorship is still a work in progress. . . . To defend the indefensible, to be a little more tolerant and a little indulgent - for me those are the unstated takeaways from this important book." - Anuradha Raman (The Hindu)

• Acknowledgments viiIntroduction. The Censor's Fist 11. Performative Dispensations: The Elementary Forms of Mass Publicity 292. Who the Hell Do the Censors Think They Are? Grounds of the Censor's Judgment 763. We Are the Law! Censorship Takes to the Streets 1154. Quotidian Eruptions: Aesthetic Distinction and the Extimate Squirm 1565. Obscene Tendencies: Censorship and the Public Punctum 190Notes 223Bibliography 257Index 275