the history of a dangerous idea Dabhoiwala, Fara (Faramerz Noshir) 1969- creator text bibliography mau 2025 First Harvard University Press edition monographic eng

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vii, 472 pages ; 24 cm. "Every premodern society, from Sumeria to China to seventeenth–century Europe, knew that bad words could destroy lives, undermine social order, and create political unrest. Given the obvious dangers of outspokenness, regulating speech and print was universally accepted as a necessary and proper activity of government. Only in the early 1700s did this old way begin to break down. In a brief span of time, the freedom to use words as one pleased was reimagined as an ideal to be held and defended in common. Fara Dabhoiwala explores the surprising paths free speech has taken across the globe since its invention three hundred years ago. Though free speech has become a central democratic principle, its origins and evolution have less to do with the high-minded pursuit of liberty and truth than with the self-interest of the wealthy, the greedy, and the powerful. Free speech, as we know it, is a product of the pursuit of profit, of technological disruption, of racial and imperial hypocrisy, and of the contradictions involved in maintaining openness while suppressing falsehood. For centuries, its shape has everywhere been influenced by international, not just national, events; nowhere has it ever been equally available to women, the colonized, or those stigmatized as racially inferior. Rejecting platitudes about the First Amendment and its international equivalents, and leaving no ideological position undisturbed, What Is Free Speech? is the unsettling history of an ideal as cherished as it is misunderstood."-- Provided by publisher The Power of Speech -- Tolerating Words -- Inventing Free Speech -- The Shapes of Freedom -- Enlightened Experiments -- The Accidental Exceptionalism of the First Amendment -- Legitimate and Illegitimate Expressions -- Imperial Entanglements -- Colonial and Postcolonial Unfreedoms -- The Marketplace of Ideas -- Afterword: From the Past to the Future. Fara Dabhoiwala. Includes bibliographical references and index. Freedom of speech History Libertad de expresión Freedom of speech English-speaking countries History Libertad de expresión Historia Países de habla inglesa JC 591 D111w 2025 323.44/309 Dabhoiwala, Faramerz Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2025 First Harvard University Press edition (DLC) 2024059244 9780674987319 (hardcover) 0674987314 (hardcover) 2024059243 MH/DLC 250102 20260601125214.0 23991150 eng