Amin Zaini, 2026. Introducing noise cleansing: reading real-time censorship ambivalently. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 1–23.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2026.2670699
ABSTRACT
While censorship is often conceptualised as a retrospective and regulated practice, this study examines it as a real-time process of speech interruption and an under-explored dimension of contemporary surveillance. It foregrounds how silencing unfolds dynamically during the circulation of speech rather than through post-hoc content removal. Drawing on media examples involving microphone cut-offs in live discussions, the paper analyses real-time censorship as a mechanism embedded within discourse, power relations, and technological mediation. It demonstrates how surveillance infrastructures condition what can be articulated, heard, or curtailed at the moment of expression. Conceptually, the article introduces ‘noise cleansing’ to conceptualise real-time censorship in which dissenting utterances are interrupted as they emerge. Pedagogically, it proposes ambivalent reading as a critical literacy orientation for engaging with the epistemic conditions produced by noise cleansing. A classroom illustration shows how such interventions can be critically examined through ambivalence.
KEYWORDS:
Noise cleansing, ambivalent reading, real-time censorship, critical literacies, discourse, power relations
Foucault News 