Abstract :
This essay calls for a fresh critical approach to the topic of censorship,
suggesting that anticensorship efforts, while important and necessary, function
much like literary prizing. The analysis draws especially on James English’s recent
study The Economy of Prestige. There are two central arguments: first, that the
librarian ethic of ‘‘selection’’––introduced by Lester Asheim in 1953 as a counterpoint
to censorship––has contributed to the unfortunate construction of the censor
as a ‘‘moron’’; and second, that anticensorship efforts more generally tend toward
uncritical canon-making, attributing value to books simply because they’ve been
censored or (more typically) challenged.
