“…with certain acts of cultural production we can find performances of freedom and suggestions of alternatives to ways of living under routinized surveillance.” [1]
In Disciple and Punish, Michel Foucault describes post Enlightenment structures of power that forge socially constructed individuals through discipline. [2] Foucault gives little consideration to the idea of human agency in his portrayal of the panoptic state. His characterizations of social interactions are wholly habituated, even vapidly procedural. Discipline and Punish conjures a kind of horror show; his analysis de-humanizes without reprieve. Although Foucault’s descriptions of the effects of panoptic surveillance are resonant, I found myself interested in the ways in which agency might be repossessed. Through this lens, the emergence and endurance of samizdat under domestic Soviet surveillance regimes offers a compelling challenge to Foucault’s portrayal of the docile, state-controlled body.
Broadly speaking, samizdat describes the practice of creating and distributing self-published clandestine texts in Soviet Russia and the greater USSR. (The term samizdat is derived from the Russian word samebyaizdat which translates to ‘a publishing house for oneself.’) [3] Early samizdat began circulating in the mid 1950’s and were primarily produced in academic and intellectual circles. [4] Samizdat provided a channel for distributing content outside of the prescriptions of the state and included, among other things, literary works, periodicals and bulletins, news, open letters, analytic texts, religious materials, manifestoes, satire and pornography. [5] Since access to printing equipment was minimal, some publishers used carbon paper and typewriters to copy texts while many others had only pen and paper. Some publications were bound, while others might have been held together with only paperclips. Many samizdat were meant to be added to or diffused through many writers. Since few copies could be made by such labor-intensive means, and since fewer copies were easier to keep out of the hands of secret police or government officials, samizdat were produced in small quantities and passed from person to person through trusted networks. [6]
Like other modes of self-publishing, samizdat operated as loci of social activities that existed outside authoritative bodies of knowledge. In this way, samizdat can be seen as a form of resistance that undermines Foucault’s assertion that panoptic surveillance necessarily conditions people to behave in prescribed ways through the “partitioning” of “docile bodies.” If it is true that people were partitioned, then, via samizdat, they passed concealed notes through holes in their “cells.” Samizdat constitute physical evidence of resistance to the attempted partitioning of bodies. Their materiality bears traces of human touch and trade: paper brittle or crinkled from handling, smeared ink, handwritten notes, typos and corrections [7] convey a deep desire for communication and exchange of knowledge.
Samizdat produced, preserved, and disseminated knowledge which might have otherwise been buried or lost. Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, for example, was first circulated as samizdat [8] as was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s, The Gulag Archipelago which was published, uncensored, outside the USSR in the early 1970’s.[9] The rights activist bulletin, Khronika Tekushchikh Sobytii, or Chronicle of Current Events, ran from 1968 until 1983 and informed readers of reports of human rights abuses and violations. Editors instructed readers to aid in the distribution of the Chronicle by re-typing or transcribing issues or by simply handing their copy to another reader. Since it would have been dangerous to publish the names or mailing addresses of the editors, information was passed from the Chronicle’s readership to the editorial team through the same person-to-person channels that were used for distribution. [10]
Through the proliferation of texts, and therefore knowledge, samizdat allowed editors, publishers and readers to maintain agency through creative cultural production. If, as Foucault asserts, power is everywhere, the persistence of samizdat represents a reactionary oppositional power that was able to preserve and grow its own influence. Given the success of samizdat, can it really be said that Soviet citizens were rendered docile? In 1982, several years after the publication of Discipline and Punish, Foucault gave his lecture Technologies of the Self in which he states that technologies of the self “permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies, souls, thoughts, conduct and way of being.” [11] Is this statement a re-examination of his earlier depiction of the disciplined body? If so, perhaps Discipline and Punishis a warning rather than a polemic.
Like samizdat, libraries and archives are creative sites that legitimize knowledge and proliferate power. Art historian Ekaterina Degot contends that samizdat’s orientation was “on human relationships” and that “it [constructed] a system of interactions.” [12] Likewise, librarians and archivists construct systems of interaction and power through creative acts under prescribed systems of standards and rules. As LIS professionals, our work should also place emphasis on human relationships and interactions rather than prescribed procedures. If we privilege the idea that LIS work is a creative social activity, rather than an administrative one, we will necessarily construct practice around community needs and requirements.
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While searching for a topic, I became interested in samizdat from a history-of-rare-books-perspective as well as the notion that they might provide a connection to what I found lacking in Foucault’s explication of modern panoptic surveillance societies. This post is exploratory, but I am interested in continuing to examine how all this relates to LIS work, as well as other ways in which Foucault’s theories can be applied to the history and political nature of samizdat, artists’ books and small presses.
Anecdotal to this post (but perhaps relevant for a longer paper) I learned while doing research that in 2014 a law was passed in Russia that made it possible to shut down websites with more than 3,000 daily visits unless owners gave the government full access. This law forces website owners to forfeit their anonymity and take legal responsibility for the factual accuracy of their content. [13] Effectively, it became impossible for dissident or anti-government speech to be posted online. Social media outlets are also easily censored by governments; a fact which inspired New York times opinion columnist Gal Beckerman to suggest that Russians “forget Facebook” and “bring back samizdat.” [14]
[1] Browne, Simone. Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015.
[2] Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.
“What is the History of Samizdat?” Social History, vol. 24, no. 2, d1999, pp. 115-133. Taylor & Francis Online, doi: 10.1080/03071029908568058. Accessed 23 Jan, 2021.
[4] Komaromi, Ann. “The Material Existence of Soviet Samizdat.” Slavic Review, vol. 63, no.3, 2004, pp. 597-618. JSTOR, doi: 10.2307/1520346. Accessed 23 Jan, 2021.
[6] Komaromi, Ann. “The Material Existence of Soviet Samizdat.” Slavic Review, vol. 63, no.3, 2004, pp. 597-618. JSTOR, doi: 10.2307/1520346. Accessed 23 Jan, 2021.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Komaromi, Ann. “Samizdat and Dissident Publics.” Slavic Review, vol. 71, no.1, 2004, pp. 70-90. JSTOR, doi: 10.5612/slavicreview.71.1.0070. Accessed 23 Jan, 2021.
[9] Komaromi, Ann. About Samizdat. Soviet Samizdat and Periodicals, https://samizdat.library.utoronto.ca/content/about-samizdat. Accessed 23 Jan, 2021.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Foucault, Michel. “Technologies of The Self: Lectures at University of Vermont October, 1982.” Foucault.info, https://foucault.info/documents/foucault.technologiesOfSelf.en. Accessed 23 Jan, 2021.
[12] Gilbert, Anne. Publishing as Artistic Practice. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016.
[13] “Russia Enacts ‘Draconian’ Law for Bloggers and Online Media.” BBC News, 31 July, 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28583669.Accessed 23 Jan, 2021.
[14] Beckerman, Gal. “Forget Facebook, Bring Back Samizdat.” New York Times, 11 May, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/opinion/forget-facebook-bring-back-samizdat.html. Accessed 23 Jan, 2021.
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