Durham; London: Duke University Press, 2013. ix, 284 pp. US$24.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-8223-05388-1.
The book under review is the result of painstaking field and archival research and reflects the author’s extraordinary versatility as a scholar. Drawing on work done in the field of censorship by both Indian and Western scholars and on interviews with people who have long-standing associations with Indian cinema and related fields, Mazzarella undertakes an analysis of Indian film censorship across colonial and postcolonial periods. Exploring continuities and discontinuities across these periods, the author claims “not to assume the insincerity of the censors’ discourse,” but rather takes it “seriously” (21), thereby moving it beyond “an entirely cynical discourse” (20). In the process, Mazzarella grapples with issues that have a direct bearing on our political culture and the processes of legitimation. The insights that we gain from the analysis done by Mazzarella can be applied to deepen our understanding of various issues that beset our political process and have baffled the analysts of Indian democracy, both native and foreign.
Nevertheless, the language of Censorium is jargonistic and the arguments are intricate. An Orientalist with little grounding in Western philosophical thinking may not find it easy reading. Being a foreigner, Mazzarella is easily able to look at the discourse of censorship from a distance and with a degree of critical detachment that is required for its proper understanding; however, the same strength could become a limiting factor in the sense of not being able to enjoy a degree of familiarity with social and cultural practices that comes naturally to a native.
Adopting a dialectical approach, the author explores censorship discourse from within. Thus, “the ideological tenacity of censorship discourse in the face of—or better, because of—its many inner contradictions” is one of author’s central preoccupations in the book (2). Further, Mazzarella pursues censorship discourse from a wider perspective in this ethnographic project: “My way into censorship is at the same time my way out to a much broader set of questions. In brief, I argue that thinking through film censorship discloses basic problems in the grounding of political and cultural authority in mass-mediated societies” (2). Indeed, the contradictions of censorship discourse and the basic problems in the grounding of political and cultural authority in Indian society are recurrent themes throughout the book. Justifying his focus on cinema when other media are also frequently targeted by censors, both official and self-appointed, Mazzarella convincingly argues that “the cinema is the one medium that in India is thought to reach everybody” and that “cinema spectatorship is a way of belonging to a mass public without having to be literate” (10).
At a more general level, the author attempts to theorize what he refers to as “the problem of public affect management” vis-à-vis modern mass media through an exploration of the specific features of cinema regulation during periods of heightened anxiety and moral panic in colonial and postcolonial India; for Mazzarella, these periods are: the 1920s and the 1930s and the 1990s and the 2000s. Interestingly, pointing to discontinuity, the author notes that the period from the 1930s to the early 1960s was marked by “a genuinely vibrant popular nationalism” that “managed to bring aesthetic discernment and cultural order into relatively smooth alignment” (87). Thus, “during this period film censorship operated within what looked like a functioning performative dispensation” (87).
In chapter 1, the author dwells upon the open edge of mass publicity and performative dispensation:twoconcepts that are vital to understanding his arguments. The open edge of mass publicity is considered as “a structural challenge that is inherent to mass-mediated societies” (29). Elsewhere, he defines this structural challenge: “the element of anonymity that characterizes any public communication in the age of mass publics” (37). For Mazzarella, any claim to authoritative cultural order is a claim to a performative dispensation. Thus, performative dispensation is understood in terms of contests among competing cultural groups, both through official institutionalized structures as well as informal channels, to lay claim to authoritative cultural order by combining patron/police functions, albeit often unsuccessfully. Allegorical representation of these contests as attempts at wielding Indra’s banner staff aptly describes ongoing tussles in our society over cultural propriety/impropriety and is a telling commentary on our civilizational specificity.
Throughout the book there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the author is constructing a general theory of performative dispensation and power. Let us, for example, consider this: “Be that as it may, I think we need to consider both the heyday of Nehruvian nationalism and the contested dispensations of the cultural emergency as historically situated responses to the challenge of producing sovereignty in mass-mediated democracy—a challenge that is, of course, by no means restricted to India” (151). However, nowhere does the author mention which “other” society he has in mind. More generally, the reader is left groping in the dark as to which, according to the author, are mass-mediated societies and which are not.
Mazzarella insightfully employs ideas deriving from psychoanalysis to account for contradictions and ambivalence in the stand of elites in a diverse society like ours, which is widely understood to be perpetually caught between tradition and modernity. Finally, in the last chapter, the author dwells on obscenity, which is understood as a tendency of image-objects and not something that inheres in them. Obscenity, thus, is spotted in “the amorally generative potential that lies at the open edge of mass publicity” (191).
The main contribution of the book lies in the author’s willingness to take censorship discourse beyond the cynical, and also in providing us with insights that can be applied to discourses on many issues that beset our political process, beyond cynicism. Arguments are coherent and the book is well organized. The proof reading is good except for a few typos.
Ganeshdatta Poddar
Foundation for Liberal and Management Education, Pune, India
pp. 886-888