Taking Offence
About This Book
Interest groups, often speaking the language of human rights, now claim to be offended by everything from plays and cartoons to books and even teddy bears. Some try to ban, gag or even kill those they judge to be the offenders. Prominent thinkers across the Anglo-American literary world have rushed to defend free expression. Many heated incidents, especially around Islam, have given the media a chance to congratulate itself on the superiority of secular democracy and on the press's vital role in protecting freedom. Caspar Melville draws on his experience as editor of New Humanist, a magazine that has itself been accused of offensiveness. He tries to disentangle the different kinds of offence and traces our present situation back to the failed identity politics of the 1970s and the new language of human rights. He also seeks to separate the duty to offend from the temptations of cultural chauvinism.
ISBN: 9781906497026
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