New Books in Critical Theory Lisa Min et al. eds., "Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State" (punctum books, 2024)
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Feb 4, 2026 Charlene Makeley, an anthropologist of Tibet; Lisa Min, a visuality researcher on North Korea; and Frank Biet, a cultural geographer of borders. They trace the origins of a redaction project and debate redaction as aesthetic practice, ethical survival, and design challenge. They probe visual, multimodal forms, self-censorship, institutional limits, and how redaction reshapes political imaginaries.
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Redaction Beyond State Secrecy
- Redaction functions both as a state technique and a ubiquitous survival/creative practice embedded in daily life.
- Treating redaction as constitutive challenges Cold War binaries and invites new political imaginaries.
Everyone Participates In Redaction
- The state claims redaction power, but citizens, officials, and researchers also self-redact, producing a pervasive 'cryptocracy' of public secrets.
- This mutual redaction fosters coded, semantic strategies (e.g., 'condensed meanings') enabling political expression under constraint.
Ethnography Relies On Editorial Redaction
- Ethnographers routinely 'redact' fieldwork by anonymizing, merging informants, and smoothing messy research into coherent narratives.
- Frank Biet describes this editorial redaction as producing an 'untruth' that helps craft a larger persuasive ethnographic truth.
