Larvatus Prodeo

Australia Post, which has been one of the many distributors for the excellent series of orange Popular Penguins, last week decreed that three titles could not be sold through their outlets – Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality Volume One.

Such books are apparently “inappropriate for a mainstream shop”, according to a spokesperson for Australia Post.

Jessica Au at Meanjin’s blog Spike has put her finger on what’s at stake:

Yet no matter what kind of spin you put on it, this is clearly regressive behaviour, which again harks back to the days when books were treated as smut rather than literature. Behind it are the assumptions that consumers are not capable of making intelligent decisions about their purchases, that children’s innocence is paramount and that anything related to sex must be p*rnographic and therefore improper. As a government-owned corporation, Australia Post has simply shown that it will panic at the smallest kick of dust and do anything to preserve a conservative brand image.

The Popular Penguins range has been a huge success in a climate when it is increasingly difficult to sell titles – they’re affordable, diverse and easily recognisable in their eye-catching (but not-even-remotely-explicit) orange and cream covers.

Strangely enough, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which was banned in Australia until the 1960s, remained unscathed. Presumably Australia Post are okay with references to ‘f*cking’ and ‘c*nt’, but not so much a Foucauldian analysis of sexuality and repression.