IN TERMS OF THE #INTERDICT A SIGNIFIER NETWORK AMONG FORBIDDEN WORDS

• Grant number: 13/04539-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: May 01, 2013
• End date: October 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Communications - Theory of Communication
• Principal Investigator: Mayra Rodrigues Gomes
• Grantee: Andrea Limberto Leite
• Host Institution: Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 08/56709-0 - Communication and censorship: theoretical analysis and documental research from the Miroel Silveira Archive in ECA/USP Library, AP.TEM

Abstract

The present postdoctoral proposal is to be developed at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP). It is specifically related to the research stream Freedom of Expression: Manifestations in Journalism, responsibility of Prof. Dr. Mayra Rodrigues Gomes and also part of the major FAPESP Thematic Research Project, Communication and Censorship - theoretical and documental analysis of censorship processes present in the Miroel Silveira Files of the library of the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo, under coordination of Prof. Dr. Maria Cristina Castilho Costa.We shall perform an analysis of the circulation of words that are considered linguistic taboos pursuing their presence in current social media postings which support the use of hashtags as a keyword indexical parameter. Our intent is to echo the terms censored on the playwrights submitted to the Public Entertainment Division of the State of São Paulo (Departamento de Diversões Públicas) between 1930 and 1960, to which we have access trough the Miroel Silveira Files.Our research will be nurtured from the data collection of censored text excerpts present in the partially released playwrights of such Archive, which was one the results of the doctoral research presented to the School of Communication and Arts of USP, Coincidences of Censorship - Figures of speech and implications in the AMS playwrights, then focused on the search for implications and figures of speech.We will primarily observe the recurring words from yesterday in the social media today. Afterwards, as second step of the research we are to observe the permanence or shift in the meaning such terms carry(ied). We understand them within a discourse driven theoretical perspective, performing an analysis that is at one time etymologic, linguistic, historic and social. As we study the censored words of yesterday and check for the legitimacy of their circulation today, we intend to draw the limits of their condition as taboo, given the formal articulation in which they are presented. So, as our theoretical breaking point we assume words as a complex notion, in its formal relationship with others in a signifier network (J. Lacan), representing the result of a power battle in the relationship with the identity of what it defines (M. Foucault) and the possibility of being connected amongst each other (definition of hypertext in P. Lévy). Such theoretical articulation is to help us develop a study on the formal level of the word, then articulate the notion of archive and of network according to the following intended theoretical trajectory: 1- the concept of signifier network, as ways to portray meaning connections that can enclose the same words in different time periods (in diachrony) bonded through a connection point of the network (in sinchrony); 2 - to recover Foucault's debate on the possibilities of constituting an archive according a given unity, approaching what offers cohesion to it; 3- to associate the structuring of archives and its current availability to reorganization based on a communicational network taking into consideration new technologies and the new media.In a more general perspective, our work is to identify where the drive for censorship is manifested today in its form of speech constraint and interdiction to free expression. It has also the objective of recovering social content that otherwise could be considered out of date and irrelevant, but that we very much consider to be alive and determining of the way we communicate over taboo subjects.