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Censorship as a Vocation: The Institutions, Practices, and Cultural Logic of Media Control in the German Democratic Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 August 2003

Dominic Boyer
Affiliation:
Cornell University

Extract

What do you think you would find on the desk of a censor? He—almost certainly “he”—would not need much. A jar filled with blue pencils. A coffee cup. A phone for whispering praise to the higher-ups and for ignoring the entreaties of his victims. For reading material, an ideological reference manual or a dog-eared sheaf of instructions would suffice. Surely, one would not expect to find any actual books on the censor's shelves—why read when your life is committed to eviscerating literature?

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2003 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

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