Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State

A wonderful book exploring how texts, and living interactions, too, leave matters unsaid, concoct effective misunderstandings, hide and reveal. Reaching far beyond the topic of state censorship, Redacted uses innovative literary forms and brilliant graphics to address anthropological practice and its relation to writing in contexts of risk and danger.

Moving in agile ways across media and creative forms, this stimulating and provocative book probes the dense character of redaction as a governmental practice. Unsettling facile distinctions between secrecy and openness, authoritarianism and democracy, the contributors show powerfully that the act of blacking out is more textually ambiguous than ever.

Upon reading this volume of museful interrogations of redaction across disciplines and nation states, one might ask if there are any human endeavors and artifacts that are not in some way redacted. The protean capacity of redaction is amply represented by the contributors. The word has metamorphosed from its 15th-century meaning of “to combine” to its 19th-century meaning “to edit” to Redacted’s present-day focus on its parallels with censorship and surveillance. Visually, the process of redaction (as illustrated by the pictorial figures and liberal inclusion of blacked out text), involves a dialectical figure-ground relationship. As indicated by the subtitle, Writing in the Negative Space of the State, the contributors earnestly accentuate the more nefarious and anti-social aspects and consequences of redaction.

This fascinating collection explores the unprecedented challenges facing ethnographic research today. Some of these have been around for a while, but many are new. Brought about by major changes in our world – from the end of the Cold War, to the rise of social media, to the global spread of authoritarianism—these challenges call into question the basic ethical principles and methods of our research. The authors of these essays demonstrate that addressing such challenges requires new approaches to ethnographic practice and new understandings of the ethical relationship between the researcher and the people among whom they conduct research. The result of this collective exploration is as intellectually rigorous and timely as it is poetic.

Book Review of Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State(opens in new tab)

In Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State, academic Rachel Douglas-Jones reflected on the poetic power of redaction to interrogate and understand the General Data Protection Regulations. She explains why redaction, currently in the news for its power to obscure, can also lead to revelation.