Scheda

Dettaglio

• Titolo:
  CFA - Silenced Knowledge: Epistemic Censorship, Invisibilisation and the Production of Ignorance in Europe (16th–21st Centuries)
• Paese:
  France
• Scadenza:
  01-10-2026 - Ore 23:59
• Descrizione:
  
  

  The history of censorship in Europe has long been studied through its institutions, legal frameworks and repressive practices. In this context, the concept of ‘epistemic censorship’ calls for a profound renewal of the study of the relationship between power and knowledge. The focus is therefore less on questioning censored knowledge than on knowledge that is prevented: that which does not gain institutional recognition, which disappears from the archives, which remains excluded from scholarly canons, or which is relegated to the margins of spaces of legitimation.
  Silenced Knowledge: Epistemic Censorship, Invisibilisation and the Production of Ignorance in Europe (16th–21st Centuries)
  
  Silenced Knowledge: Epistemic Censorship, Invisibilisation and the Production of Ignorance in Europe (16th–21st Centuries)
  
  Electronic Journal Revue d’Histoire Culturelle de l’Europe/ Cultural History of Europehttps://mrsh.unicaen.fr/hce/
  Issue edited by Mickaël Popelard (University of Caen Normandy)
  
  Articles may be written in one of the following languages: French, English, Italian, Spanish or German:
  
  Proposals should be sent to: alexandra.merle@unicaen.fr and eric.leroyducardonnoy@unicaen.fr
  – Deadline for proposals: 1 October 2026
  – Deadline for submission of the full paper: 1 March 2027.
  – Articles will undergo a double-blind peer review process, carried out by members of the journal’s scientific committee and editorial board, and possibly by external experts.
  – Feedback to authors following anonymous review: July 2027.
  – Publication of the issue: autumn 2027.
  
  The history of censorship in Europe has long been studied through its institutions, legal frameworks and repressive practices: indexes of banned books, royal censorship, ecclesiastical and inquisitorial controls, monitoring of printed matter, media regulation, and the monitoring and selection of artistic works. In recent decades, however, research has shifted its focus, exploring, for example, the contours of self-censorship and addressing more diffuse and less visible forms of restriction on expression and the circulation of ideas.
  
  In this context, the concept of ‘epistemic censorship’ calls for a profound renewal of the study of the relationship between power and knowledge. It refers not only to the explicit prohibition of a discourse, but to the whole range of mechanisms that contribute to rendering certain knowledge inaudible, invisible, illegitimate, or impossible to produce. The focus is therefore less on questioning censored knowledge than on knowledge that is prevented: that which does not gain institutional recognition, which disappears from the archives, which remains excluded from scholarly canons, or which is relegated to the margins of spaces of legitimation.
  
  The aim of this issue is to explore the many forms these obstacles have taken from a long-term European perspective, from the 16th century to the present day. This approach seeks to bring together the history of censorship, the history of knowledge, the history of science, the sociology of knowledge, gender studies, postcolonial studies, information science and the digital humanities.
  
  Particular attention will be paid to the processes of selection, prioritisation and exclusion that govern the production of knowledge. Contributions may thus focus on the actors, institutions, practices and mechanisms that help to define what can be recognised as legitimate knowledge.
  
  Among the areas likely to be explored are, in particular:
  - Marginalised, discredited or silenced forms of knowledge: popular, vernacular, artisanal, female, religious or minority knowledge;
  - Mechanisms of invisibilisation: oblivion, silence, non-publication, non-translation, destruction or lack of archiving;
  - Scholarly institutions and their boundaries: universities, academies, learned societies, editorial boards, funding agencies;
  - The languages of knowledge and linguistic hierarchies in modern and contemporary Europe;
  - The relationships between gender, intellectual authority and scientific legitimacy;
  - Knowledge produced in the European peripheries and the conditions under which it gains access to central spaces of recognition;
  - Documentary, archival and heritage policies as sites of selection and exclusion of knowledge;
  - Historical forms of the production of ignorance (agnotology) and their political, religious, scientific or economic uses;
  - Contemporary transformations of epistemic censorship in the digital age: algorithms, platforms, selective digitisation of corpora, visibility of knowledge online;
  - Comparative and transnational approaches highlighting the circulation across Europe of practices of legitimising and excluding knowledge.
  
  By focusing on the concepts of ‘suppressed knowledge’, ‘invisibilisation’ and ‘the production of ignorance’, this volume aims to contribute to a European history of the conditions under which knowledge is possible. The aim is not so much to catalogue forbidden discourses as to analyse the often subtle mechanisms that shape the boundaries of the knowable and determine what can be transmitted, preserved and recognised as legitimate knowledge.
  
  Selected bibliography:
  Albisson Mathilde, Le livre en procès : les nouveaux enjeux de la censure inquisitoriale dans l’Espagne du XVIIe siècle, thèse Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2020. Publiée en espagnol sous le titre El proceso al libro. La censura inquisitorial en la España del siglo XVII, Madrid, Cátedra, 2024.
  Autocensura e historiografía en tiempos de los Austrias, dossier publié dans la revue Manuscrits. Revista d’Història Moderna, 35, 2017 (coord. Cesc Esteve)
  The Routledge Companion to Freedom of Expression and Censorship (dir. John Steel & Julian Petley), Routledge (collection Media and Cultural Studies Companions), 2009 (2023).
  Bachert-Peretti, Audrey, « Liberté académique et pressions politiques aux États-Unis : entre silence et violence, l’université sous tension ». Revue du droit public et de la science politique en France et à l’étranger, no 4 (2024), p. 5 9.https://hal.science/hal-04943755.
  Bachleitner Norbert, Die literarische Zensur in der Habsburgermonarchie von 1751 bis 1848, Böhlau, 2027.
  Badouard, Romainn « Réseaux sociaux : les nouveaux chemins de la censure ». Mouvements, 112 (4), 2022, p. 37-146. https://doi.org/10.3917/mouv.112.0137.
  Chamelot, Fabienne, « Secrets d’archives coloniales ou gouvernement en perte de contrôle ? Retour sur l’IGI 1300 », Critique d’art. Actualité internationale de la littérature critique sur l’art contemporain, no 58 (juin 2022), p.136-156. https://journals.openedition.org/critiquedart/91854.
  Darnton Robert et Roche Daniel, Censorship and Cultural Regulation in the Modern Age, OUP, 2004.
  Donato, Maria Pia (dir.), Medicine and the Inquisition in the Early Modern World, Brill, 2019.
  Esteve, Cesc (dir.), Disciplining History: Censorship, Theory and Historical Discourse in Early Modern Spain, Peter Lang, 2018.
  Koselleck, Reinhart, Le Règne de la critique (1959 ; trad. fr., Minuit, 1979).
  Lavie, François, « Le tribunal du rire. L’Inquisition et la censure de la facétie dans l’Italie post-tridentine (vers 1550-1650) », Revue historique 2020/1 n° 693, Presses Universitaires de France, p. 131-166.
  Martin, Laurent, Histoire de la censure en France. Presses Universitaires de France, 2022.https://doi.org/10.3917/puf.marti.2022.01.
  Martin, Vincent P., Fort Karën et Micoulaud-Franchi, Jean-Arthur, « Latrumplang, instrument de destruction de la pensée : analyse de l’impact de la censure trumpiste sur la recherche en santé mentale », Actes de la 32ème Conférence sur le Traitement Automatique des Langues Naturelles (TALN), volume 1 : articles scientifiques originaux, pp. 477-487, Marseille, France. ATALA \\& ARIA, 2025.
  https://aclanthology.org/2025.jeptalnrecital-taln.29/.
  Schnitzler, Laurence, « Cancel culture : une nouvelle censure ? Rétrospective sur une guerre idéologique ». Plasticité. Revue d’étude des poétiques et pratiques de la plasticité dans la littérature et dans les arts, no 6 (juin 2025).http://interfas.univ-tlse2.fr/plasticite/1138.
  Tarrant Neil, Giambattista Della Porta and the Roman Inquisition: censorship and the definition of Nature's limits in sixteenth-century Italy, Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2012.
  Winkelbauer Thomas, Die Habsburger Monarchie (1526-1918) als Gegenstand der modernen Historiographie, Böhlau,
  Wögerbauer Michael, Pavel Janáček, Vítězslav Sommer, Petr Píša, Press Freedom and Censorship in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848–1918, Böhlau, 2018.