On Free Speech, Censorship, and the Editorial Process
In recent months, the concepts of free speech and censorship have been boiling in the literary community, and frankly, I find it wild.. Really, the reason that I find it as crazy as I do is how desperately some folks are trying to define free speech and censorship.
But for those who haven’t been wading through the mosquito-ridden bog of this literary Twitter discourse, I’ll sum it up here. Over the past couple of years, there have been several instances in both the literary community and in the political climate that have been cited as instances of censorship. Part of this has involved universities canceling the speaking engagements from speakers promoting controversial platforms, but another part of this follows the literary community’s work to make the community safer for women, minorities, and other targeted and frequently harassed demographics. This work has largely attempted to make the community more aware of the abuse, harassment, and injustice that has permeated literature for centuries, as well as to reverse and prevent further damage
In recent history, this work has exposed the abusive behavior of high profile writers like Junot Diaz, as well as the harassment and discrimination perpetrated by numerous other members of the literary community (it’s an upsettingly long list, and the point of this letter isn’t to systematically recount each individual and instance - such an account would be lengthy in its own right). In response to these accusations and instances of destructive behavior, members of the literary community have called for these individuals’ platforms for be revoked, or at least, re-evaluated, arguing that if someone is in a position of power and has used that position of power to abuse others, why then should they maintain that position?
In other cases, individual work has been published that has been considered offensive by a majority of readers. The most recent and poignant example being The Nation’s recent publication of Anders Carson-Wee’s poem, “How-To,” which has been cited as using racist and ableist language that many people objected to being published, especially in a magazine of The Nation’s reach and reputation. In the aftermath of the poem’s publication, members of the community called for the poem to be removed from The Nation’s website, or for Carson-Wee to be cancelled completely, or for the publication’s editorial staff to be re-evaluated. For now, Carson-Wee has issued a statement of apology and The Nation’s editorial staff have also issued an apology and have added a disclaimer to preface the poem.
These two paragraphs are a very abridged version of the events that have transpired, and they don’t truly cover the volume of problematic behavior, antagonistic, abusive, and harassing individuals, or the range of perspectives regarding these subjects. To cover these issues would take far more time and research than I have to invest - the lateness of this issue of Jarfly is evidence enough that I'm having trouble keeping up. My intent in this summary is to provide some background for the rest of this letter and to show a fraction of the issues that the literary community is, at present, wrestling. If you want to gain a deeper understanding of these issues, I do encourage you to do the research yourself – the receipts aren’t too difficult to find.
So, in response to all of these calls for the literary community to clean up shop, remove the toxicity that is eating it from within, and to hold its members accountable, new calls and accusations have retaliated. These mainly have to do with accusing members of the community, various publications, and different organizations of censorship and of waging wars against free speech. Former editors from The Nation have argued against the public’s outcry and various litmags have hunkered down on free speech platforms of "we-care-about-excellent-work-regardless-of-authorship-and-we-never-apologize-for-offensive-work-and-taking-down-work-is-censorship-and-the-real-oppression" and so on.
In the wake of all of this, I think it’s important for me, as the editor-in-chief of Jarfly and as a member of the literary community to speak to these topics. As a literary editor, I am in a position of power, having the ability and responsibility to curate a publication of creative writing, giving space to voices in that community. It is an ethical responsibility, and I think that working as an editor requires transparency and care to the literary community and to the public at large. So for these reasons, I want to take this opportunity to talk about how I approach free speech, censorship, and the editorial process here at Jarfly.
At a foundational level, I think that everyone deserves the right to free speech. This right is necessary for the public and the press to hold the government, corporations, and other power structures accountable. So Jarfly does endeavor to respect one’s right to free speech. However, while I think that free speech is valuable, I don’t think that it should be free from consequences. If someone exercises their free speech for incendiary or hateful purposes, they are then responsible for dealing with those consequences. If those consequences involve organizations, publications, and platforms feeling the need to blacklist someone, that’s just part of it. Given actions have given consequences. If you, as a writer, work to offend and insult others, I'm not sure you're allowed to be offended when those people and their associates don't want anything to with you.
I think the argument that a publication should focus exclusively on the “work” itself and not the “author” is short-sighted. I don’t think that work can be extracted from its authorship. Even if a work is written impersonally or as persona, it still says something about the author. While we can debate how much a work reflects the self, and whether or not an author can truly capture the self in writing, I think that all work, on some level, reveals the self. Given that words and writing are composed in the mind of the author, I think that it’s impossible to completely divorce author and writing – even the attempt to do such says something about authorial intent. Intent is implicit. The worker is implicit to the work. What we know about the worker, then, influences our understanding of the work. It introduces nuance, perspective, and interpretation. And since meaning-making is a relationship between author and audience, the audience’s understanding of the author makes a difference. Every time. (And I recognize that there are numerous ways to think about this subject and plenty of people far smarter than I am have written about it and think differently, but as for this magazine, this is one of the editorial guideposts.)
As such, I don’t think its censorship to reject or remove work from publication based upon its author. If the author is part of the meaning, and if meaning is a critical part of the work, and if negotiating that territory is at the heart of the editorial process, then editors have a responsibility to determine how authorship influences meaning. If the values and reputation of the worker are at odds with the values and reputation of the publication, or if they reveal themselves to be after the original publication date, then the magazine should have the right to then reject or remove the work based upon authorship.
Furthermore, something that needs to be considered in this whole free speech/publication discussion is that editors are people and that the editorial process itself is speech. By soliciting and accepting speech, arranging that speech, collaborating with writers regarding that speech, and then disseminating that speech into the world, in so doing creating a collection of voices that itself speaks, editors are engaging in speech. If this argument were truly about free speech, then the free speech of editors would be considered. An editor should not be forced to publish something they don't feel like publishing and they shouldn't have to maintain the publication of a work if they can no longer feel justified about it. But the fact is that this entire thing has nothing to do with free speech and has everything to do with power. It has everything to do with folks wanting to say whatever they want and never suffer any consequences for it. It has everything to do with people wanting their own perspectives to stand paramount to others. It’s about not being held responsible for the well-being of others. No matter how I look at it, it seems to always be about entitlement and power.
And this can be seen in most situations where the accusation of censorship is made. If there’s a public outcry against any given thing for being insensitive or outright offensive, the people invested in that thing seem to frequently accuse the general public of censorship.
Let me be frank. There are enough markets out there in the literary community for everyone, even markets that specifically call for work that other magazines consider problematic. In publication talks, we always hear how important it is to make sure than a publication is a good fit for your work, and this is just an extension or that. There are magazines that do try to separate a work's message from the author's reputation. There are magazines that resist and criticize identity politics. There are magazines that specific work to criticize and degrade the rest of the literary community. Again, it’s not hard to establish a journal. So if a magazine doesn't hold editorial views that someone agrees with or appreciates, I think the obvious conclusion would be to just not submit there. After all, in cases like this, one can avoid wasting everyone's time. But this conversation has circulated enough that it's fairly obvious that - in general - cries about censorship aren't genuinely about free speech; they're about power and bullying someone who disagrees with you to publish a viewpoint they don't agree with. It's about stripping agency from others and declaring yourself the victor by feigning victimhood.
But that being said, this magazine isn't one of those. I cannot, in good conscience, represent authors or artists that bring hostility, abuse, and pettiness into the literary community - authors that target folks and systematically attack and harass them. From the beginning - which, granted, wasn't that long ago - Jarfly has been about building a community, and if someone has a history of damaging, haranguing, or stirring up hurt in the greater literary community, then I can't justify providing them with a platform that only compounds that hurt. As an editor, I am responsible for the reputation and effect of Jarfly, and I want to make sure that its effect is positive, nurturing, and welcoming. As long as I'me editing Jarfly, that's what I'm going to work to accomplish.
Thank you.
Ian C. Williams
Editor-in-Chief
But for those who haven’t been wading through the mosquito-ridden bog of this literary Twitter discourse, I’ll sum it up here. Over the past couple of years, there have been several instances in both the literary community and in the political climate that have been cited as instances of censorship. Part of this has involved universities canceling the speaking engagements from speakers promoting controversial platforms, but another part of this follows the literary community’s work to make the community safer for women, minorities, and other targeted and frequently harassed demographics. This work has largely attempted to make the community more aware of the abuse, harassment, and injustice that has permeated literature for centuries, as well as to reverse and prevent further damage
In recent history, this work has exposed the abusive behavior of high profile writers like Junot Diaz, as well as the harassment and discrimination perpetrated by numerous other members of the literary community (it’s an upsettingly long list, and the point of this letter isn’t to systematically recount each individual and instance - such an account would be lengthy in its own right). In response to these accusations and instances of destructive behavior, members of the literary community have called for these individuals’ platforms for be revoked, or at least, re-evaluated, arguing that if someone is in a position of power and has used that position of power to abuse others, why then should they maintain that position?
In other cases, individual work has been published that has been considered offensive by a majority of readers. The most recent and poignant example being The Nation’s recent publication of Anders Carson-Wee’s poem, “How-To,” which has been cited as using racist and ableist language that many people objected to being published, especially in a magazine of The Nation’s reach and reputation. In the aftermath of the poem’s publication, members of the community called for the poem to be removed from The Nation’s website, or for Carson-Wee to be cancelled completely, or for the publication’s editorial staff to be re-evaluated. For now, Carson-Wee has issued a statement of apology and The Nation’s editorial staff have also issued an apology and have added a disclaimer to preface the poem.
These two paragraphs are a very abridged version of the events that have transpired, and they don’t truly cover the volume of problematic behavior, antagonistic, abusive, and harassing individuals, or the range of perspectives regarding these subjects. To cover these issues would take far more time and research than I have to invest - the lateness of this issue of Jarfly is evidence enough that I'm having trouble keeping up. My intent in this summary is to provide some background for the rest of this letter and to show a fraction of the issues that the literary community is, at present, wrestling. If you want to gain a deeper understanding of these issues, I do encourage you to do the research yourself – the receipts aren’t too difficult to find.
So, in response to all of these calls for the literary community to clean up shop, remove the toxicity that is eating it from within, and to hold its members accountable, new calls and accusations have retaliated. These mainly have to do with accusing members of the community, various publications, and different organizations of censorship and of waging wars against free speech. Former editors from The Nation have argued against the public’s outcry and various litmags have hunkered down on free speech platforms of "we-care-about-excellent-work-regardless-of-authorship-and-we-never-apologize-for-offensive-work-and-taking-down-work-is-censorship-and-the-real-oppression" and so on.
In the wake of all of this, I think it’s important for me, as the editor-in-chief of Jarfly and as a member of the literary community to speak to these topics. As a literary editor, I am in a position of power, having the ability and responsibility to curate a publication of creative writing, giving space to voices in that community. It is an ethical responsibility, and I think that working as an editor requires transparency and care to the literary community and to the public at large. So for these reasons, I want to take this opportunity to talk about how I approach free speech, censorship, and the editorial process here at Jarfly.
At a foundational level, I think that everyone deserves the right to free speech. This right is necessary for the public and the press to hold the government, corporations, and other power structures accountable. So Jarfly does endeavor to respect one’s right to free speech. However, while I think that free speech is valuable, I don’t think that it should be free from consequences. If someone exercises their free speech for incendiary or hateful purposes, they are then responsible for dealing with those consequences. If those consequences involve organizations, publications, and platforms feeling the need to blacklist someone, that’s just part of it. Given actions have given consequences. If you, as a writer, work to offend and insult others, I'm not sure you're allowed to be offended when those people and their associates don't want anything to with you.
I think the argument that a publication should focus exclusively on the “work” itself and not the “author” is short-sighted. I don’t think that work can be extracted from its authorship. Even if a work is written impersonally or as persona, it still says something about the author. While we can debate how much a work reflects the self, and whether or not an author can truly capture the self in writing, I think that all work, on some level, reveals the self. Given that words and writing are composed in the mind of the author, I think that it’s impossible to completely divorce author and writing – even the attempt to do such says something about authorial intent. Intent is implicit. The worker is implicit to the work. What we know about the worker, then, influences our understanding of the work. It introduces nuance, perspective, and interpretation. And since meaning-making is a relationship between author and audience, the audience’s understanding of the author makes a difference. Every time. (And I recognize that there are numerous ways to think about this subject and plenty of people far smarter than I am have written about it and think differently, but as for this magazine, this is one of the editorial guideposts.)
As such, I don’t think its censorship to reject or remove work from publication based upon its author. If the author is part of the meaning, and if meaning is a critical part of the work, and if negotiating that territory is at the heart of the editorial process, then editors have a responsibility to determine how authorship influences meaning. If the values and reputation of the worker are at odds with the values and reputation of the publication, or if they reveal themselves to be after the original publication date, then the magazine should have the right to then reject or remove the work based upon authorship.
Furthermore, something that needs to be considered in this whole free speech/publication discussion is that editors are people and that the editorial process itself is speech. By soliciting and accepting speech, arranging that speech, collaborating with writers regarding that speech, and then disseminating that speech into the world, in so doing creating a collection of voices that itself speaks, editors are engaging in speech. If this argument were truly about free speech, then the free speech of editors would be considered. An editor should not be forced to publish something they don't feel like publishing and they shouldn't have to maintain the publication of a work if they can no longer feel justified about it. But the fact is that this entire thing has nothing to do with free speech and has everything to do with power. It has everything to do with folks wanting to say whatever they want and never suffer any consequences for it. It has everything to do with people wanting their own perspectives to stand paramount to others. It’s about not being held responsible for the well-being of others. No matter how I look at it, it seems to always be about entitlement and power.
And this can be seen in most situations where the accusation of censorship is made. If there’s a public outcry against any given thing for being insensitive or outright offensive, the people invested in that thing seem to frequently accuse the general public of censorship.
Let me be frank. There are enough markets out there in the literary community for everyone, even markets that specifically call for work that other magazines consider problematic. In publication talks, we always hear how important it is to make sure than a publication is a good fit for your work, and this is just an extension or that. There are magazines that do try to separate a work's message from the author's reputation. There are magazines that resist and criticize identity politics. There are magazines that specific work to criticize and degrade the rest of the literary community. Again, it’s not hard to establish a journal. So if a magazine doesn't hold editorial views that someone agrees with or appreciates, I think the obvious conclusion would be to just not submit there. After all, in cases like this, one can avoid wasting everyone's time. But this conversation has circulated enough that it's fairly obvious that - in general - cries about censorship aren't genuinely about free speech; they're about power and bullying someone who disagrees with you to publish a viewpoint they don't agree with. It's about stripping agency from others and declaring yourself the victor by feigning victimhood.
But that being said, this magazine isn't one of those. I cannot, in good conscience, represent authors or artists that bring hostility, abuse, and pettiness into the literary community - authors that target folks and systematically attack and harass them. From the beginning - which, granted, wasn't that long ago - Jarfly has been about building a community, and if someone has a history of damaging, haranguing, or stirring up hurt in the greater literary community, then I can't justify providing them with a platform that only compounds that hurt. As an editor, I am responsible for the reputation and effect of Jarfly, and I want to make sure that its effect is positive, nurturing, and welcoming. As long as I'me editing Jarfly, that's what I'm going to work to accomplish.
Thank you.
Ian C. Williams
Editor-in-Chief