Deviant knowledge

The ability to openly challenge and express criticism of governing authorities is a cornerstone of progressive democratic societies. To ‘speak truth to power’ generates accountability and transparency where elected and appointed officials, and their governing rationalities and ideologies, are questioned and held to account. However, critical voices of dissent are increasingly marginalized, suppressed and threatened. Recent international headlines, such as, ‘World press freedoms have deteriorated …warning of a new era of propaganda’ (Reporters Without Borders, 2016); ‘Art is under Threat: Oppression against Freedom of Expression is Dangerously High’ (Freemuse, 2016); ‘The demise of academic freedom. When politically correct “speech police” are given the upper hand’ (Walpin, 2015), all attest to the ways that democratic freedoms in speech and artistic expression are under attack and subjected to systematic censorship and erosion. Such attacks on thought and expression have been witnessed in various historical regimes underpinned by a politics of intolerance and fear. More recently, the post 9-11 period has observed how commentators critical of the ‘war on terror’ have been silenced, neutralized and ‘dismissed as traitorous acts of sedition’ (Walters, 2003:132-134). For some commentators the demise of civil liberties is associated with heightened terrorist threats and the perceived need to regulate and monitor ‘offensive speech’. For Schoenwald (2001) the ‘authoritarian ascendency’ or the ‘rise of modern American conservatism’ has had a pervasive influence on media, global economics, political party politics, and the production of knowledge. Therefore, to offend with words or creative expression is seen as a catalyst that may incite radical fundamentalism and disrupt the social order. This position is examined comprehensively in Mike Hume’s influential book Trigger Warning. Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech?, where he argues that: ‘Everybody in Western public life claims to support free speech in principle. Yet in practice free speech is on the endangered list. Freedom of expression today is like one of those exotic animals that everybody says they love, but that still appear to be heading inexorably towards extinction. Everywhere from the internet to the universities, from football to the theatrical stage, from out on the streets to inside our own minds, we are allowing the hard-won right to freedom of expression to be reined in and undermined’ (Hume, 2015:12). If academics, journalists, artists and other critical commentators are prevented from openly challenging and critiquing governing authorities, then how are the ruling elites held accountable for their decisions, policies and actions? Along these lines, - how are notions of democracy, human rights, social justice and humanitarianism advanced and progressed for the global good? If, as Hume (2015) argues, free speech is becoming constructed as a form of ‘extremism’ - as a danger to social and political stability – then those who exercise democratic rights to critical free speech also become demarcated as ‘extremists’ or ‘deviants’ and the words and values they disseminate are indeed forms of ‘deviant knowledge’