Censoring and Promiscuous Reading

           Why does everything always have to be so strictly controlled?  Why is it that when something new, provocative, or different is introduced, angst brews over its implications?  I have, for many years now, been irritated to my core with people who cannot accept change and originality, who remain rigid and static.  It was refreshing then, to see someone like John Milton in his work Areopagitica, discussing, at a time when this regimental control was at a peak, the importance of promiscuous reading and vehemently arguing against printing licenses.

            Milton outlines, that whether written, spoken, or printed, speech is a public good.  He argues that a parliament supposedly open and built through the ideas and interests of the people was beginning to display monarchic qualities, as prohibiting those without a license from printing went against the best interests of the people.  Milton promotes promiscuous reading, asserting that in having this mindset, individuals can resist forced ideologies and form their own, individual reasoning. With censorship and licensing these abilities are diminished.

            I wonder what would Milton say about censorship now?  In the recent past, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, was pulled from shelves in Chapters.  Recently, there has been great debate over the substitution of the "n-word,” in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for “slave.”  Are these decisions/censorships really justified?  It hinders promiscuous reading, but is it necessary?    In the case of Huckleberry Finn, what does this do to the meaning of the text?  Can we really suggest that the “n-word” and “slave” are interchangeable, synonymous?  It makes one wonder if we actually live in as free a society as we claim to.  From a contemporary perspective, we are always so quick to point out the backward ways of early periods and the seemingly unreasonable limitations that were in place.  But we face similar issues still, in what is seen as a progressive, liberal, western society.

            Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Milton’s piece is his assertion that, "If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man" (818, right column).  Milton anticipates George Orwell’s notions of control in 1984, a text that comes into being over three hundred years later, which anticipates itself, the state of society forty years into the future. 

            I think it is incredible that we are able to trace literary culture back to these authors from hundreds of years ago and make note of the ideas they express that are still prevalent in a contemporary setting.  Whoever said clairvoyance was a scam needs to check out the history of literary culture…