Libri Prohibiti – globale° 2020 Conference

“Banned books and censorship” was the thematic focus of the ‘globale° 2020 – Festival for cross-border literature.’ Its opening was a conference held at the bremer shakespeare company on October 30. The cooperation between festival, university, and Alumni der Universität Bremen e. V. has once more proven to be a successful one. Far less delightful was, however, what the speakers had to report. 

It is likely that more than 100,000 books are prohibited somewhere around the globe. It is not only dictatorial regimes but also democratically constituted societies that clamp down on dissident or disagreeable literature and authors even today – more or less openly, violently, or radically. Increasingly, however, also individual ideologic or religious groups appear with censoring measures and are thereby taking the place of states or religious institutions. With the prevalence of digital media, these also become places and actors of censorship. By broadening one’s perspective, those phenomena have to be discussed in the context of publication bans or censorship that are currently generating discussions in this country as well under the name of ‘cancel culture.’

At the end of the fascinating event, the German PEN Center introduced the work of the program ‘Writers in Prison’ – a conclusion with an oppressive topicality.