This introductory article to Modes of censorship and translation: national contexts and diverse media offers a critical and methodological assessment of the phenomenology of censorship and translation. It provides overarching definitions of both but also traces their interfaces and points of friction. Taking the key ideas of the (in)visibility and (in)accessibility of a translated text in a censorial context as a point of departure, the author analyzes Bourdieu's notion of censorship, Foucault's account of the relationship between power, knowledge and sexuality, Bhabha's assessment of national textuality , and their application to the study of translation and censorship. This is followed by a discussion of each chapter from the volume in relation to the specific methodological problem it raises, setting it within a broader methodological framework. The discussion draws together the various common threads that run through the individual case studies, which are based on an examination of different national context and diverse media, and attempt to synthesize their commonalities and specificities within a coherent framework.