The poetics of subversion: Civil liberty and lese-majeste in the modern Thai state

Since the turn of the century, the modern Thai state has suppressed freedom of thought and expression on grounds less to do with established legal principles than on application of techniques connected with literary criticism. Because of the discursive nature of crimes against the state, many of which draw their logic from the law on defamation, the state has attempted to control metaphorical space. As a result, the state, in the guise of the courts and police, have developed a poetics of subversion which demarcates what is politically and culturally acceptable and what is not. Through continual application of this poetics, the Thai state came to inhibit the growth of a public sphere, as described by Jurgen Habermas. Whereas a similar process in Japan was ended by its loss in World War II, Thailand kept all the trappings of a militarized society in which the monarchy played a key role. By the time that the military took full control over Thai society in the late 1950s, laws became meaningless. The crowning moment of Thailand as a full-fledged national security state came with the massacre of 6 October 1976. Thai society became intellectually and morally paralyzed, unable to engage in rational discourse due to the severely constricted public sphere.;This study describes areas of civil liberties that have narrowed throughout the century, and traces the genealogies of each law designed to control and limit the freedom of thought and expression. In particular, the subject of the monarchy is the most forbidden, and the law of lese-majeste protecting it from criticism acts to silence an entire society on a wide range of topics. Next, the general charge of "internal rebellion" is discussed, as are the principles used by courts in deciding the guilt of defendants. We also investigate how laws controlling newspapers, movies, and literature have come to create a certain kind of political and social "truth." Then we examine the legitimizing mechanisms of amnesties and constitutions used by military dictators, and the declaration of "abnormal times," which allow the application of martial law and military justice to civilian society. Finally, we investigate the development of communism as a charge against culture.