speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

Taking Sides
Poland banned "Party X" of Canadian emigre businessman Stanistaw
Tyminski because its xenophobia and general lunacy were
embarrassing the fledgling democracy. Although the excuse was
10,000 forged signatures on electoral registration documents,
Tyminski claimed that similar abuses by other parties were overlooked.
Expelled from the country, his parting words were: "I don't
want to be in a Poland transformed into a Jewish colony." Of course,
almost all the Jews had been murdered half a century ago by the
Nazis, with the complicity of many Poles. 26 Soon after succeeding
Gorbachev, Yeltsin outlawed the Communist Party. Such responses
are not limited to shaky third-world or ex-communist governments.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene when the Republican
Party prevented David Duke from running in its Florida and Georgia
presidential primaries. 27
Forced to express preferences about speech, the liberal state
typically emphasises form over content. But the time, manner and
place restrictions that even First Amendment devotees accept inevitably
favour those who can comply and still be heard. As we have
seen, regulation often targets extremes, hoping that stylistic excess
will foment enough anger to generate a consensus for restraint. As
religious fervour declined, blasphemy laws punished only the worst
insults. As sexual taboos fell, only the portrayal of violent sex was
proscribed. Racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia are so pervasive
that only the most virulent forms are regulated. As I argued in the
previous lecture, however, preoccupation with the extremes tolerates
and appears to condone quotidian harms. In any case, outrage
is not a neutral quality. It varies with the audience, as even the U.S.
Supreme Court acknowledges in enforcing community standards of
decency. 28 Furthermore, the very novelty that causes offence is an
essential aesthetic ingredient. 29 In one of his most striking dances,
Merce Cunningham jumped into a plastic sack and propelled himself
across the stage like a fish on land. He no longer performed it,
however, "because I was in it once."
Every artist should ask, "What is the point of doing what you
already know?" . . . Dance, like any work of art, is not interesting
unless it provokes you—where you say, "I never thought of that,"
and have some new experience. When I see dances where I can
perceive from the first five minutes what they're going to be, my
interest drops 50 per cent. 30
Artists delight in shocking the bourgeoisie: Salvador Dali paints a
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