Paper short abstract:

Based on the auto-ethnographical and ethnographical data I propose the first categorization of the autocensura, aming that the created frame will help the investigation of this phenomena. I illustrate my talk with examples from such fields as the history, sociology/anthropology, and life sciences.

Paper long abstract:

When in 2006, Eviatar Zerubavel published his extraordinary book "The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life," he omitted one chapter - about our - researchers/academics - "open secret" which is the existence and broadly spread practice of "autocensura" - self-censorship. If this part of ordinary research work, an element of the knowledge production process, is covered by silence (Wagner 2022) and, to my best knowledge, was not yet the object and subject of academic investigation, we can ask how it is possible that such phenomenon didn't attract the curiosity of researchers, who should deal with it. It is probably because the myth of academic freedom is powerful and autocensura is perceived as the result of unfreedom (or partial lack of it). While this practice seems to be quite evident in dictatorial political regimes in which the universities are not free and academic workers are under political censorship, the autocensura practices seem useless in the occidental democracy. We are supposed to be free academics/scholars.

What if our big censor were ourselves?

Why Two Elephants in our research working spaces? The first concerns our blindness regarding autocensura, and the second is specific to each of us. We all have (some) elephant(s) related to the context of our research (production, reception and content) -- we are influenced/limitted by our "collectif of thought" (Fleck, 1935), paradigms in fashion, business constraint (financial support of research), peer-hierarchical pressures, political correctness - campism, propaganda, and the fear of ostracism and exclusion).