Article révisé par les pairs
| Résumé : | This essay discusses the multilayered phenomenon of censorship in Russia, situating it within a longue durée history that stretches from the imperial period to the Soviet Union and into the present day. It argues that censorship functions not simply as a mechanism of repression, but as a constitutive element of authoritarian regimes, shaping discursive horizons, regulating affect, and engineering permissible meaning. The analysis focuses particularly on the censorship of Russian profanity (mat), which has historically operated as a site of state control over corporeality, sexuality, and expressive idioms. Through philological, historical, and cultural analysis, the study traces the semantic polysemy and performative pragmatics of obscene vocabulary, showing how amphibology, irony, and grotesque ambiguity destabilize attempts at semantic closure. The persistence of such expressions, despite systematic prohibition, demonstrates how censorship paradoxically generates new modes of linguistic creativity and resistance. The paper further examines contemporary continuities, including legal sanctions, informal mechanisms of self-censorship, and algorithmic platform moderation. Ultimately, censorship emerges here as a complex assemblage: juridical, technological, and discursive, which seeks to monopolize symbolic space while inadvertently fostering counter-discourses of irony, polyphony, and semantic proliferation. The case study of Russian mat thus highlights how repression engenders alternative cultural formations and enduring vernacular counter-publics. |
