Exposing silence as cultural censorship: A Brazilian case

In this article I assert that in focusing on salient discourses, contested cultural domains, and public forms of conflict and power, cultural and ling uistic anthropologists, and other social scientists, have overlooked the si gnificance of communal forms of silence in shaping the social and political landscape. I argue that such customary silences constitute "cultural censo rship," which, unlike state-sponsored censorship, is practiced in the absen ce of explicit coercion or enforcement. Although practiced by different and opposed groups, cultural censorship tends to be constituted through, and c ircumscribed by, the political interests of dominant groups. In this articl e, which is based on ethnographic research in Rio de Janeiro, I analyze a c ase of cultural censorship by examining he customary silence surrounding th e subject of racism in Brazil. By emphasizing the phenomenology of cultural censorship among poor Brazilians of African descent, I argue that silence must not be conflated with, and does not preclude the existence of, non-heg emonic consciousness.