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y separately published work icon Giving Offense : Essays on Censorship selected work   essay  
Issue Details: First known date: 1996... 1996 Giving Offense : Essays on Censorship
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

In Giving Offense, South African writer J. M. Coetzee presents a coherent, unorthodox analysis of censorship from the perspective of a writer who has lived and worked under its shadow. Widely acclaimed for his many novels, Coetzee is also a brilliant literary critic and essayist. The essays collected here attempt to understand the passion that plays itself out in acts of silencing and censoring. Subscribing neither to the myth of the writer as a moral giant nor to that of the writer as persecuted innocent, Coetzee argues that a destructive dynamic of belligerence and escalation tends to overtake the rivals in any field ruled by censorship.

From Osip Mandelstam commanded to compose an ode in praise of Stalin, to Breyten Breytenbach writing poems under and for the eyes of his prison guards, to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn engaging in a trial of wits with the organs of the Soviet state, Giving Offense focuses on the ways authors have historically responded to censorship. It also analyzes the arguments of Catharine MacKinnon for the suppression of pornography and traces the operations of the old South African censorship system. Finally, Coetzee delves into the early history of apartheid and critizes the blankness of contemporary political science in its efforts to address the deeper motives behind apartheid. (Source: Libraries Australia).

Contents

* Contents derived from the Chicago, Illinois,
c
United States of America (USA),
c
Americas,
:
University of Chicago Press , 1996 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Taking Offense, J. M. Coetzee , single work essay (p. 1-33)
Emerging from Censorship, J. M. Coetzee , single work essay (p. 34-47)
Lady Chatterley's Lover : The Taint of the Pornographic, J. M. Coetzee , single work essay (p. 48-60)
The Harms of Pornography : Catharine MacKinnon, J. M. Coetzee , single work essay (p. 61-82)
Erasmus : Madness and Rivalry, J. M. Coetzee , single work essay (p. 83-103)
Osip Mandelstam and the Stalin Ode, J. M. Coetzee , single work essay (p. 104-116)
Censorship and Polemic : Solzhenitsyn, J. M. Coetzee , single work essay (p. 117-146)
Zbigniew Herbert and the Figure of the Censor, J. M. Coetzee , single work essay (p. 147-162)
Apartheid Thinking, J. M. Coetzee , single work essay (p. 163-184)
The Work of the Censor : Censorship in South Africa, J. M. Coetzee , single work essay (p. 185-203)
The Politics of Dissent : Andre Brink, J. M. Coetzee , single work essay (p. 204-214)
Breyten Breytenbach and the Reader in the Mirror, J. M. Coetzee , single work essay (p. 215-232)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Alternative title: Contra la censura : ensayos sobre la pasión por silenciar
Language: Spanish
    • Barcelona,
      c
      Spain,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Debate ,
      2007 .
      image of person or book cover 182554120365702580.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 347p.
      Edition info: 1st ed.
      ISBN: 8483067137, 9788483067130
      Series: y separately published work icon Historias (Debate) Barcelona : Debate , 2004 8149890 2004 series - publisher non-fiction
    • Barcelona,
      c
      Spain,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Debolsillo ,
      2008 .
      image of person or book cover 7607047462439011794.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 348p.
      ISBN: 8483466902, 9788483466902
      Series: y separately published work icon Contemporánea Barcelona : Debolsillo , 1998 7994359 1998 series - publisher novel Number in series: 342

Works about this Work

Excess as Ek-stasis : Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg and Giving Offense Anthony Uhlmann , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Comparatist , October no. 38 2014;
'This paper will develop a reading of J. M. Coetzee’s novel The Master of Petersburg (1994) alongside ideas that Coetzee develops in Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship, which was published in 1996 by the University of Chicago Press the year he began teaching as a visiting Professor at the Committee of Social Thought at Chicago. That elements of these two books might be related can be inferred from the overlap involved in the writing process of each (the first essay in Giving Offense appeared in print in 1988 and Coetzee worked on essays related to the book from then until 1996). The Master of Petersburg appeared after Age of Iron (1990) and was followed by Disgrace in 1999. It might be paired with Foe, which appeared in 1986, as a novel that explicitly engages with the work of another novelist: Daniel Defoe in Foe and Dostoevsky in The Master of Petersburg. This essay will consider how an understanding of excess that involves thinking outside of or beyond reason can be witnessed in both of these books. Excess will further be linked to related ideas of “offense” and “refraction” or “perversion”: each of these terms involves elements of “going beyond” an already given perspective in order to generate new meanings and new understandings of the “true.” These processes are revealed through a comparison of themes developed by Dostoevsky in “At Tikhon’s”—a chapter that was censored from the original published version of his novel Demons (see Dostoevsky, Demons 749–87), because it was considered perverse, offensive and excessive—and The Master of Petersburg, which enters into dialogue with it. (Introduction)
Book Review : Censorship Christopher Merrett , 1997 single work review
— Appears in: Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa , vol. 9 no. 2 1997; (p. 140)

— Review of Giving Offense : Essays on Censorship J. M. Coetzee , 1996 selected work essay
Book Review : Censorship Christopher Merrett , 1997 single work review
— Appears in: Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa , vol. 9 no. 2 1997; (p. 140)

— Review of Giving Offense : Essays on Censorship J. M. Coetzee , 1996 selected work essay
Excess as Ek-stasis : Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg and Giving Offense Anthony Uhlmann , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Comparatist , October no. 38 2014;
'This paper will develop a reading of J. M. Coetzee’s novel The Master of Petersburg (1994) alongside ideas that Coetzee develops in Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship, which was published in 1996 by the University of Chicago Press the year he began teaching as a visiting Professor at the Committee of Social Thought at Chicago. That elements of these two books might be related can be inferred from the overlap involved in the writing process of each (the first essay in Giving Offense appeared in print in 1988 and Coetzee worked on essays related to the book from then until 1996). The Master of Petersburg appeared after Age of Iron (1990) and was followed by Disgrace in 1999. It might be paired with Foe, which appeared in 1986, as a novel that explicitly engages with the work of another novelist: Daniel Defoe in Foe and Dostoevsky in The Master of Petersburg. This essay will consider how an understanding of excess that involves thinking outside of or beyond reason can be witnessed in both of these books. Excess will further be linked to related ideas of “offense” and “refraction” or “perversion”: each of these terms involves elements of “going beyond” an already given perspective in order to generate new meanings and new understandings of the “true.” These processes are revealed through a comparison of themes developed by Dostoevsky in “At Tikhon’s”—a chapter that was censored from the original published version of his novel Demons (see Dostoevsky, Demons 749–87), because it was considered perverse, offensive and excessive—and The Master of Petersburg, which enters into dialogue with it. (Introduction)
Last amended 9 Dec 2014 08:23:52
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