The Project

Summary

The three-year research project ARRS J6-2583 (1^st September 2020–30^th August 2023) aims to examine an under-researched topic that has yet to receive systematic scholarly attention. Instead of partial descriptions, this project offers an insight into the concealed yet constitutive nature of censorship practices by carrying out the first systematic survey of the period, which includes new primary sources, and framing the various detailed case studies with a new conceptualization of the modern institution of censorship. Rather than continue to apply the term “censorship” to highly heterogeneous practices, the project proposes a more unified concept of censorship, which then allows for insight into actual relatively specific areas of its legal regulation and implementation. In the literature of the period, these areas are 1) periodicals, 2) book publishing, and 3) theater.

The spatial scope is limited to the Slovenian lands within the Habsburg monarchy (especially Carniola, but also Carinthia and Styria); this Slovenian situation is then broadened by the imperial context and the context of neighboring literary cultures (German, Czech, Croatian, Hungarian). The temporal scope is the “long nineteenth century,” the period between 1789–1914, which the revolutionary year of 1848 divides almost symmetrically into two phases: the phase dominated by preventive (or pre-publication) censorship, and the phase determined mostly by retroactive (or post-publication) censorship.

The project aims to utilize the panoramic view of the “longue durée,” whose long temporal scope itself also encourages theoretical and methodological reflection. The focus is on censorship in the narrow sense of institutionalized forms of control over the circulation of texts, the essential dimension of which is the capacity to sanction (implemented by the repressive apparatus of the state). This provides a firm vantage point for investigations into less institutionalized restrictions, such as self-censorship, indirect sanctions, market forces, discrimination against sexual and other minorities, and other forms of censorship in the broader sense.

The project comprises both general (synthetic) investigations and a set of carefully selected case studies covering the entire period, all literary media and genres, and all key problem areas of the proposed project. The focus is on the implementation of censorship practices; their impact on Slovenian books, newspapers, and theater; their role in the development of the Slovenian national movement; the recorded strategies for evading censorship; the changes in censorship’s social functions; and the impact of “gender censorship,” which remains an unexplored area of Slovenian literary history.

The project team consists of researchers from three institutions (ZRC SAZU, University of Ljubljana, University of Nova Gorica), most of whom have already worked on censorship, with the principal investigator having published internationally on the topic. Other Slovenian institutions (The Jožef Stefan Institute, The Institute of Contemporary History, The NUK Manuscript Collection) are participating as well as invited international experts on censorship in the Habsburg Monarchy (Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Zagreb) and on nineteenth-century national movements (SPIN).

Deliverables include an international workshop on censorship in the Habsburg Monarchy, with proceedings planned for an international research journal; an international conference whose proceedings are planned as a collective volume in Slovenian (edited by the PI); a book by the PI; digitization of unpublished censorship documents; and the project website. In addition to these scholarly results, an exhibition at the National and University Library in Ljubljana will aim to reach the general public as well.

Keywords

Slovenian literature; book censorship; theater censorship; censorship of periodicals; the book market; the media system; the literary system; self-censorship; gender censorship; court trials; bans and confiscations; Slovenian national movement; the long 19th century; professionalization of writers