Silencing the Silencing? On Illocution, Conversational Exclusion, and the Free Speech Argument for Censorship

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Philosophy (MA) (120 EC)

Helmich, Maurits (2018)

Silencing the Silencing? On Illocution, Conversational Exclusion, and the Free Speech Argument for Censorship

Master thesis | Philosophy (MA) (120 EC)

Since the beginning of the 1980s, much debate in the jurisprudential literature on freedom of speech has been about the (alleged) right to produce and publish pornography. Law professor and feminist Catherine A. MacKinnon produced an interesting argument to justify censorship: pornography itself silences women (and we are allowed to silence silencing speech). This thesis seeks to investigate this normative defence of the 'silencing of the silencing', particular in the form promulgated by Rae Langton from the 1990s on. It argues that Langton and other feminists are right to conclude that free speech implies more than a mere 'right to locution' -- there must also be a right to be heard. Yet, it puts into question the premise that that fact alone could justify a censorship. That usually constitutes an offence against the spirit of autonomy, one of the main reasons to accept free speech in the first place.

Conversational Exclusion

Silencing

Feminism

Pornography