Silence, a Politics Essay Sample

This article investigates the unfamiliar political deductions of silence. By and large regarded as merely a deficiency of address imposed upon the powerless. silence is thereby positioned as unfriendly to political relations. In a normatively constituted linguistic political relations. silence’s function can ne’er be more than that of absence. The subsequent apprehension that silence can run as opposition to domination has opened original and ground-breaking interventions of its function in political pattern. However. the statement here moves beyond this simple dualism. analyzing how silence does non simply reinforce or resist power. but can be used to represent egos and even communities. That silence can run in such diverse ways. as subjugation. opposition. and/or community formation. leads to the acknowledgment that its ultimate political relations can non be fixed and determined. Contemporary Political Theory ( 2003 ) 2. 49–65. Department of the Interior: 10. 1057/palgrave. cpt. 9300054 Keywords: silence ; political relations ; communicating ; linguistics ; community

Introduction
Political struggles. individualities. and political orientations are negotiated linguistically. linguistic communication being both the instrument by which worlds interact and the agencies of building what it means to be human. That voice and address are cardinal to the building of community and political action is practically a truism within political theory. The premise that linguistic communication is deployed unproblematically and ubiquitously F that is. that linguistic communication ‘just is’ and that all people use linguistic communication identically and invariably F is. unluckily. merely every bit much a truism. For illustration. take what has served as the archetypical community for political theoreticians from Aristotle to Locke to contemporary philosophers: the household. A household is made up of disparate persons. with frequently conflicting values. committednesss. involvements. even fondnesss. and yet still ( by and large ) consider themselves a closely knit community. Normally. when household is used as metaphor for a larger community. nevertheless. commonalty and unanimity is assumed. which basically fails to even come close the experience of most existent households. Contrary to the premises of such cultural observers. close relatives no more necessitate unanimity than does national beginning ; so. some of the most barbarous and unforgiving struggles emerge within household constructions.

Kennan Ferguson Silence: A Politicss

Families. alternatively. utilize a assortment of mechanisms to persist. Of involvement here is one peculiar scheme. frequently used in state of affairss of profound dissension ( faith. political relations. gender ) : that of silence. One of import though non sole manner to negociate such differences is non to talk of them ; to let other. more unsophisticated. subjects of treatment to organize the lingual medium in which the household exists ( Tannen. 1990 ) . These silences need non be entire or cosmopolitan. but they are frequently a utile scheme to enable domestic continuity in the face of extremist discontinuity. This tactic is model. excessively. for larger communities. Therefore. commonalties. both existent and imagined. are already based on deficiency of address: political. ethical. and epistemic silences which are needfully backgrounded to set up other. overlapping connexions. Yet those who wish to construct and reenforce community reference silence merely as a menace to community. as failure and malfunction. Silence is that which is imposed upon marginalized groups. for illustration. so it is easy assumed that silence must be overcome.

Silence is declarative of miscommunication. so a theoretical account of community based on an image of linguistic communication as crystalline communicating must extinguish silence. Even if silence is recognized as an appropriate response. it may still be represented as absence. When Wittgenstein famously concluded his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with the apothegm ‘Whereof one can non talk. thereof one must be silent’ he supposed that since we can non accomplish truth in nonlogical affairs. for illustration moralss or aesthetics. they hence have no topographic point in doctrine ( Wittgenstein. 1922. Section 7 ; Ferguson. 1999. 22–34 ) . Wittgenstein recognized a topographic point for silence ( he surely does non believe such issues unimportant simply because they can non be reduced to syllogistic presentation ) . but this silence remains that of deficiency. Issues that can non be adequately addressed should non be addressed at all ; they are outside the kingdom of the proper and hence truly languish.

This essay begins by analyzing these common constructs of silence’s function through the lenses of communicating theory. feminist unfavorable judgment. and political theory. In contrast. it so turns to those Fieldss that recognize the power inherent in silence. whether as a signifier of subjection. opposition. or motive. Finally. I point to the ways in which silence itself establishes private and public commonalty. where it is non simply an hindrance to community. That silence resists any reductionistic political function. in other words. denotes a sweeping truth about both linguistic communication and its deficiency: similarity in signifier is non tantamount to similarity in map.

Denigrated Silence
‘Silence is weird’ read the tagline for a 2001 advertisement run in the United States for cellular phone service. It is possibly less surprising that Contemporary Political Theory 2003 2

Kennan Ferguson Silence: A Politicss such an attack to hush prevails in modern-day society than that the apothegm declaring silence aureate still has broad plenty birthplace to be therefore transposed. There exist. it seems. few provinces less desirable than silence. Silence is linked to the horror of absence. of aporia ; Pascal held that the silence of infinite ‘strikes terror’ ( Steiner. 1976. 32 ) . Inasfar as communicating between people is popularly considered the height of human enterprises. to be soundless agencies to bewray the ends and hopes of humanity. to abdicate ties with fellow citizens. If in popular discourse the thought of silence is denigrated. its destiny is barely better in academia. As the constructs of individuality and activity have become progressively connected to a linguistic political relations. the being of silence has in bend been progressively seen as the subjection of these individualities and activities. If linguistic communication. in other words. is individuality. so deficiency of linguistic communication can merely be the death of individuality. Possibly the most open interventions of silence within academic discourse have been recognized by sociolinguistics and ‘communication surveies. ’ In analyzing the function that linguistic communication plays in the building of community. ethnicity. society. relationships. political orientation. and personality. lingual attacks have identified many of the critical ways in which linguistic communication creates and constructions human relationships to the universe. to others. and to egos.

Yet surveies of linguistic communication and society normally address silence simply as a deficiency of communicating. With a few of import exclusions. lingual theory and surveies of communicating take silence as their unexpressed antithesis. Communication is presumed to shack within. or be constituted by. linguistic communication ; words might be demarcated by the blank between them. but the words remain the simple objects of analysis. Those that do acknowledge silence as a constituent facet of linguistic communication frequently regard it as simply the deficiency of sound F possibly between vocalizations or as an single response to certain behaviours. For illustration. silence may be defined as mentioning to intermissions between words ( Crown and Feldstein. 1985 ) . or ‘to the failure of one addressee to bring forth a response to a request’ ( Dendrinos and Pedro. 1997. 216 ) . or as an initial reluctance and hold in reaction ( Rochester. 1973 ) . In its most utmost signifier. the entire disappearing of a peculiar linguistic communication is metonymically the disappearing of a people. the extinction of a civilization ( Crystal. 2000 ) .

The sociolinguist Wardhaugh ( 1985. 198–201 ) . for illustration. attends to the usage of silence in response to inquiries that are morally or personally hard to reply. Silence in such a state of affairs. he argues. comprises a sort of response ( and therefore is a proper topic for linguistics ) . but finally remains an turning away. The appropriate response to rhetorical inquiries is no response. which is itself a sort of response. Contemporary Political Theory 2 A 2nd analysis of silence has emerged in recent decennaries from feminist theoreticians. who have embarked on the undertaking of detecting how. when. and why women’s voices have been silenced by a patriarchal civilization. In some of import ways. this attack has overlapped with the linguists’ ; they criticize silence as a failure or denial of communicating. and analyze the societal and political causes of this voicelessness. However. a critical difference in the women’s rightist analyses remains: silence is politicized. That some people ( adult females ) are encouraged or forced to stay soundless can be traced to cultural norms which use silence to deny them bureau.

This attack has caused a cardinal ambivalency in recent feminist theory: how to both explain the opprobrious power relationships that have historically kept women’s voices from being heard while besides observing the work that adult females have done within the domains allowed to them. Olsen’s work epitomizes this. In her book Silences ( Olsen. 1978 ) . she described and critiqued countless silencings that occur in modern-day American society and the history of literature. ways and times that the voices of adult females are defamed. ignored. stilled. or precluded. Olsen called for a rediscovery of women’s work that had been purged from literary history. while besides progressing a cultural review of those who attacked ( and go on. she argued. to assail ) women’s voices. If the most gifted and original voices among us are stifled. so such systems must impact upon the less immune even more badly. ‘What. ’ she asks. make such devastations ‘explain to the remainder of us of possible causes F outside ourselves F of our going unders. weaknesss. unnatural silencings? ’ ( Olsen. 1978. 141 ) . Similarly. Rich. possibly the best-known women’s rightist critic to link women’s experience to silence. argues that adult females as adult females have been repeatedly and forcefully obstructed from come ining the public kingdom of address. ‘The full history of women’s battle for self-government. ’ she argues. ‘has been muffled in silence over and over’ ( Rich. 1979. 11 ) .

Rich has seen it her responsibility to get the better of this silence. giving adult females the voice that has so long been taken from them. Rich. in her refusal/acceptance of the 1974 National Book Award. dedicated it in portion to ‘the soundless adult females whose voices have been denied us’ ( Olsen. 1978. 174 ) . For Rich ( 1997. 13 ) . linguistic communication non merely stands closely related to action. it is the manner in which action happens. and the modern universe F filled with telecasting and erotica F steadily replaces action with passiveness. Hers is a combined review of sexual subjection and modernness. which celebrates action and address as the sole manners of political pattern. and conflates passiveness and silence into the kingdom of impotence. This reading of silence as connected to forced absence and suppression transcends Rich’s and Olsen’s work. of class ; it has long permeated the huge bulk of feminist readings of silence. One of its strongest manifestations appears in anti-pornography feminism. where it is frequently argued that the Contemporary Political creative activity. distribution. and even being of adult stuffs inherently silences non merely those who are depicted within them. but all people ( adult females. kids ) who are objectified by it ( Langton. 1993 ; MacKinnon. 1993 ) . Brownmiller ( 1975 ) suggests that colza is a offense non merely of sexual force. but of silences: the promotion and formal classs environing colza make the communicating and coverage of colza incompatible with social definitions of muliebrity as pristine and honest.

Nor is this reading limited to feminist theory. Silence qua absence/ impotence appears in a assortment of political contexts. See it used as absence within history: the blank in official archives are termed ‘silences’ in the historical record ( e. g. . Allen. 1986 ) . See it used as exposure in political scientific discipline: Noelle-Neumann ( 1984 ) describes the inability to show one’s political penchants in the face of contrary public sentiment. nevertheless little. as the ‘spiral of silence. ’ See it used as the antonym of organized political contention: Act Up’s famed anti-AIDS slogan ‘Silence = Death’ per se calls for political address as action. Underliing each of these critical constructs of silence is a theoretical account which conflates community. communicating. and address. Silence. whether that of a junior-grade group or as perpetuated by institutional mechanisms. represents a menace to that link. and by extension a menace to political relations. If silence is that which means the deficiency of articulation. and such an articulation is the primary F even sole F agencies of making and go oning community. so silence is incompatible with community and society. This inexplicit and expressed belittling infects non merely those who decry silence. but besides theoretical positions that presume the mutualness of community/communication/speech.

Theorists utilizing this theoretical account by and large either condemn a disempowered group’s deficiency of authorization within a society ( such as the feminist denouncement of silence described above ) who are ‘silenced. ’ or suggest new schemes to advance equality and democracy by promoting address. Habermas’s conceptual attack to societal power and equality exemplifies this latter attack. Having developed and deployed over the old ages an ambitious and punctilious review of the privileging of enlightenment subjectiveness. Habermas subsequently began to defend address as the preparation for democratic pattern. Get downing with a instead simplified ‘ideal address situation’ and traveling to more complex constructs of dianoetic societal infinite. Habermas’s solution to the quandary of difference and inequality is resolutely verbal. For illustration. in his thorough intervention of jurisprudence and equality Between Facts and Norms ( Habermas. 1998 ) . he champions. in bend. ‘discourse theory. ’ ‘communicative ground. ’ ‘communicative action. ’ ‘communicative power. ’ ‘communicative freedom. ’ ‘discourse rules. ’ and his old steppingoff point. ‘speech act theory. ’

Habermas’s ideal. a nomologically impersonal kingdom of power. is surely a valid and commendable aspiration. Nor is he incorrect in his apprehension that address comprises a constituent portion of jurisprudence and just entree to jurisprudence remains partly dependent on discourse equality. He is surely non the lone political or societal theoretician to cut down freedom and the really possibility of justness to the handiness of address ; the huge bulk portion this attack. But in reenforcing a normative communicative theory as the ideal preparation of political democracy. he places silence entirely on the side of fondness. inequality. and subjugation. If linguism is the exclusive site of community and connexion. so atomization is inevitable. In other words. Habermas’s theoretical attack non merely ignores the ways in which silence figures within people’s lives. it makes the evidences of community ( which he apparently defends ) indefensible and implausible. The thought of the populace as normatively locutionary extends to legal and societal theoreticians far beyond Habermas’s orbit. That civic political action must be lingual. for illustration. is entrenched steadfastly in US law. The stenography for the First Amendment to the US Constitution is ‘freedom of address. ’ and so many justnesss have argued that alternate signifiers of look ( e. g. . flag combustion ) are constitutionally unprotected by non literally being address ( Rehnquist et al. . 1989 ) .

Without words. of class. jurisprudence does non be. These assorted premises of words as self-evident for communicating. individuality. and political relations are popular. widespread. and profoundly deep-rooted. Each serves to do speech/noise normative. and silence pervert ; as the sociolinguist Scallon ( 1985. 26 ) puts it. ‘hesitation or silences’ are thought to bespeak ‘trouble. trouble. losing cogs. ’ But positioning silence entirely as absence. and address as the substantial facet of these powerful constructs. makes possible a dramatic set of possibilities. As Foucault ( 1980. 101 ) has argued. ‘silence and secretiveness are a shelter for power. grounding its prohibitions. but they besides loosen its clasp and supply for comparatively vague countries of tolerance. ’ The really being of silence thereby becomes a signifier of opposition. of non-participation in these patterns of community edifice. individuality formation. and norm scene. Silence. in other words. betokens a rejection of these patterns of power.

Immune Silence
In its most moderate apprehension. silence is seen as basic backdown. whether from a conversation or from the concern of modern life. Silence is a ceasing of engagement. a find of ego by cutting off external stimulation. whether the creative activity of ‘a clip for quiet. ’ a spacial or temporal retreat. or Contemporary Political Theory 2003 2 peculiar locale in which to read. believe or loosen up. Silence. in this construct. is every bit much metaphorical as actual. The ‘silence’ of the wilderness. for illustration. is non truly a actual quiet. as anyone who has spent a dark bivouacing at that place good knows. Alternatively. it is a nonliteral slowing-down. an flight from the everyday force per unit areas of its imagined opposite. metropolis or suburban life. Yet this metaphorical quality prevails exactly because silence is seen as a rejection. nevertheless impermanent. of those metaphorically noisy pattern is that are being escaped.

Contrary to popular premise. silence is non the pre-condition of slumber. of idea. of speculation. of artistic grasp ; a great figure of the world’s people do all these things without absolute lull. However. silence is perpetually posited as their requirement. ‘Of class. ’ it could be argued. ‘one can kip following to noisy streets. farm animate beings. elevated trains. or church bells. but one does kip better without those distractions. ’ And yet those who sleep near these noises frequently find it hard. or unreassuring. to kip without them. Similarly. those noises that would maintain yet other people awake by their very absence. sounds such as clicking redstem storksbills. Rana catesbeianas. or another person’s external respiration. are indispensable for others’ sleep. If silence is non privileged as jussive mood for personal growing. so. why does it hold this repute? One reply may lie in this metaphorical place it holds: if silence is a signifier of backdown. so those facets of life that require a grade of backdown from the premises and engagements of that life are metonymically linked to hush. Silence. in other words. maps as a representation of backdown ; the false repose of silence bars the nontranquil engagements of the outside universe. This does non. nevertheless. represent a peculiarly open power of opposition. even if it implies a signifier of disclaimer.

Linked to the backdown construct of silence is a more open refusal to take part in the normative lingual patterns of a province or society. Silence can turn out to be powerful non merely as isolation. but for the societal map of self- or group-withdrawal as a opposition. The sociolinguist Gilmore gives one familiar illustration: that of the pupil whose silence in the schoolroom serves to defy the authorization of the instructor. whose power in bend can non coerce an reply. The studied silence. or ‘sulk. ’ can be used against a teacher’s effort to settle. understand. or suitably penalize a pupil ; in declining to talk the pupil resists take parting in the lingual direction of a schoolroom. Gilmore noted that while instructors may mention to relentless silence in a assortment of ways. such as ‘‘‘pouting. ’’ ‘‘fretting. ’’ ‘‘acting spoiled. ’’ ‘‘being rebellious. ’’ ‘‘acting awful. ’’ ‘‘having a pique fit. ’’ and so on. ’ in each instance it is seen as a menace to the normative criterions of a schoolroom and normally causes a instructor to react and pay attending to the soundless pupil ( Gilmore. 1985. 154 ) . Contemporary Political Theory 2003 2

Silence can function as opposition to any establishment that requires verbal engagement ( as do virtually all ) . On a macroscopic political graduated table. provinces frequently require such engagement and later use a assortment of agencies to oblige it. The state-sponsored demand to take an curse is a peculiarly open signifier of obligatory address. Loyalty oaths. public retractions of unorthodoxy. self-incrimination. implemented pledges of commitment. and needed judicial avowals all oblige certain well-circumscribed address Acts of the Apostless. Bosmajian ( 1999 ) has illuminated a profound flight of the ways in which coerced address has been used to command. imprison. and even kill those who dissent. from Thomas More and Galileo to the victims of the US. House Un-american Activities Committee and employees forced to subscribe oaths as a status of employment. Most notably. these institutional forces consider soundless dissent threatening ; worsening to back up a king’ or legislative body’s activities is judged tantamount to opposing the state. Silence as non-participation is endangering to insitutional forces in that silence resists whatever demands are made without needfully opposing. In a cosmology of linguistic communication. it is tantamount to heresy.

For the Catholic theologian Picard ( 1952. 18 ) . for illustration. the primary value of silence is. paradoxically. this deficiency of value. ‘Silence. ’ he argued. ‘does non suit into the universe of net income and utility…it can non be exploited. ’ As absence. it lacks substance ; as non-response. it resists interpellation. Campion’s movie The Piano meticulously gaining controls and illustrates this function of silence. The supporter. Ada. played by Holly Hunter. is tongueless: early in life. she says. she decided to halt speech production. ‘My male parent says it is a dark endowment and the twenty-four hours I take it into my caput to halt external respiration will be my last. ’ ( Campion. 1993 ) . Her silence weighs to a great extent on her hubby Stewart ( who selected her by mail order ) . but his inability to listen carefully to the silence in which she lives distinguishes him from his blunt. nonreader. but finally more antiphonal neighbour Baines who learns to handle her as a fierce. independent. full individual.

Ada’s silence adds to her humanity in that she demands more from her noninterlocutors. yet her silence clearly demonstrates a changeless rebelliousness instead than any kind of passiveness. The silence of a 19th-century adult female is non an uncommon matter. particularly as represented by the strain of feminist unfavorable judgment epitomized by Rich. Ada. unlike the archetypal silenced adult female. uses her silence to upset those who regulate societal behaviour with address. Her primary communicating through the eponymic piano is available merely to those with the ability or will to listen ; that she does non talk seems both the literalization of the norms of her society and her rebellion against those norms. One manner of sing the relationship of silencing and being silenced is as a ‘self-contained antonym. ’ where silence can be reclaimed from the mechanisms of power to be used as a pattern of selfcreation ( Clair. 1998 ) . Contemporary Political Theory 2003 2

Silence can be used against others. but non simply in immune ways. To see such use as simply wresting a tool from an oppressive system. as a selfcontained antonym. is to lose that silence’s power extends beyond opposition. Silence. both as backdown and as pointed turning away. can be used to pull strings. control. and harm others merely every bit easy as to protect the ego. Again. to turn to kids to understand its utilizations. their deployment of silence against one another shows a silence which itself does force. The ‘silent intervention. ’ the deliberate backdown of communicative words from an unfavored member of that social group. can be lay waste toing. Importantly. this does non literally hush the person in the sense of contradicting that person’s efforts at address. but onslaughts by revoking accepted societal signifiers of acknowledgment. Similarly. alleged ‘passive aggressive’ behaviour. utilizing silence to penalize person who relies on verbal interaction within a relationship. besides wields silence to chastise and train ( Sattel. 1983 ) .

In each instance. silence operates on an exoteric registry. In each of the above instances. silence is non something that is done to one. but a pattern which one sharply performs. Active and reactive silence does non suit good into the prevailing theoretical account of silence as impotence. However. this is non to state that silence as power is better. or more frequently true. than silence as belittling. Indeed. inasfar as normative address structures both. discourse every bit constitutes both theoretical accounts. since each plants with and against the norms of address. Brown ( 1998. 316 ) points out that these constructs. far from being oppositional. are in fact reciprocally structured: that it is possible for silence. she argues. ‘both to shelter power and to function as a barrier against power. ’ Yet before traveling beyond this dialectical relationship. one more theoretical account of silence as power exists. one that is non reducible to either a passive. resistant. or aggressive position: that used on the analysand.

Professional psychotherapeutic dealingss are premised on an redolent silence. yet one that is surely far from impersonal as structured by organisational power. The therapist’s silence. at least comparative to the client. intends to advance. or even provoke. revelation. Similar state of affairss include a professor’s usage of silence used to pull out a category. a journalist’s to promote elucidation. a priest’s hearing a confession. or so any middleman to bring on conversation. In each of these instances. silence maps as a demand. non for silence in return. but for narrative engagement. Silence therefore evokes non-silence: it incites interaction without demanding it. Even Sontag ( 1969. 20 ) . renowned for her resistance to the autocratic nature of Freudian depth psychology. recognized that this usage of silence contains an ‘element of wisdom’ within it. where it ‘keeps things ‘‘open. ’’’ If silence can work to arouse a dianoetic subjectiveness. so. its power is neither defensive nor aggressive.

It may run on both registries at one time. as in Lyotard’s ( 1988. 3–31 ) description of the ‘differend’ as address which is at the same time demanded and impossible. as in those who demand eyewitness Contemporary Political Theory 2003 2 histories by victims of race murder. It may run on neither. as the redolent silence does. It may be that silence has no preset construction of power at all. If this is the instance ( and it is my contention here that it is ) . silence can play an infinite assortment of functions in societal. political. and lingual webs. If it can be destructive. defensive. and redolent of egos and societal dealingss. so it can besides lend to the fundamental law of these individualities. The balance of this paper therefore examines some ways in which silence operates at this formational degree. peculiarly stressing its usage as a scheme to negociate the viing worlds of incommensurability and community.

Constituent Silence
Silence can run in multiplicitous. fragmental. even self-contradictory ways. The political relations of silence. in other words. are non reducible to any peculiar political functionality ; even more than its putative antonym. linguistic communication. silence resists absolution. As Block de Behar ( 1995. 7 ) has explained. ‘silence remains capable to the readings of the receiving system to whom its message is addressed. ’ The trouble of jointing silence. she continues. arises because there is ‘no warrant that an reading occurs of a discourse which is non expressed. of an purpose which remains unknown. and which may non even exist. ’ Inasfar as silence can non be literalized or universalized. it is non reducible to one singular map. If silence was purely immune. or oppressive. it could be neatly categorized as good or sinister ; alternatively it both embodies and transcends these orderly classifications. Disapprobations of silence. particularly in institutionalised contexts. arise from this really indefiniteness.

Griffin describes schoolroom silences for the college professor therefore: A stretch of silence may intend any figure of things. It may intend ‘We have no thought. as we have non yet even glimpsed the frontispiece of this text. ’ Or ‘You appear to be runing under the naif psychotic belief that we care. ’ Or ‘I will ne’er imbibe orange vodka once more. ’ Or ‘If she doesn’t name me tonight I will throw myself off the chapel tower. ’ Or ‘If you’d merely interrupt down and state us the reply. we could all travel place and slumber. ’ Very frequently it means ‘I am a idiot in a schoolroom of masterminds. ’ But instructors. frequently bad transcribers. normally interpret it as follows: ‘We despise and loathe you’ ( Griffin. 1992. 219 ) . Griffin clearly means to remind instructors that silence is non needfully to be feared. but her battalion of significances is non rather so reducible to the moral lesson she intends.

For the schoolroom silence may good intend abhorrence ; its really Contemporary Political Theory 2003 2 irreducibility to any of these territorialisations makes the deficiency of address endangering to those organisational constructions and their representatives ; instructors are frequently justified in mistrusting silence. This peculiar capableness significantly differs from the customary political functions of silence. even among those discussed above who recognize some of its possible sorts of power. If silence is comprised entirely as deficiency. communicating becomes impossible ; if it is limited to coerce. either as opposition or as aggression. it separates and dividers relationships. If it can work within. state. households in assorted ways. both to make divisions and to defy power. so the nature of silence is in fact no intrinsic nature at all. That it has no necessary signifier. nevertheless. leads to an undiscovered and unacknowledged capableness: it can besides enable and bring forth. Silence. in other words. can be constituent.

It can make individualities and enable communities. Once understood as freed from interpretative constructions that needfully condemn ( or celebrate ) it. the limitless facets of its multiplicitous functionality are freed for their originative and productive capacity. Nietzsche ( 1969. 202–204 ) . as Zarathustra. conceives of silence as the method for the most profound single alterations. An anthropomorphized Solitude welcomes him from the universe of work forces. the ‘world below. ’ where ‘ [ vitamin E ] verything among them speaks. everything is betrayed. ’ To the ‘fire-dog. ’ the animal of the underworld. he argues against the blare of the alleged ‘world-changing events. ’ ‘The greatest events F they are non our noisiest but our stillest hours. The universe revolves. non around the discoverers of new noises. but around the discoverers of new values ; it revolves inaudibly’ ( Nietzsche. 1969. 153–154 ) . Zarathustra. in a parable he calls ‘The Stillest Hour. ’ explains how he changed from his comparings with other work forces to his creative activity of himself. Repeatedly. ‘something’ spoke to him ‘voicelessly. ’ assisting him recognize how to get away his childhood. his pride. his shame. and his restrictions imposed upon him by society ( Nietzsche. 1969. 166–169 ) .

As Muneto ( 1991 ) ( Thus Spoke Zarathustra’s foremost Nipponese transcriber ) has shown. the centrality of silence to Zarathustra’s self-origination is unusually kindred to that of Buddhism. particularly that of two books on the Buddha’s accomplishment of enlightenment that Nietzsche was reading at the clip of Zarathustra’s composing. The reconditeness of the function of absence of linguistic communication within Buddhism extends far beyond the cognizance of this paper. but single silence and speculation figure centrally within the procedure of Buddhist enlightenment. particularly its Zen ( Chan ) and Mdhyamika signifiers ( Wright. 1992 ; Wang. 2001 ) . ( The abstainers of monkish silence probably besides serve as a theoretical account for Nietzsche. ) Zarathustra’s embracing of non-linguistic signifiers of communicating ( dance. music. singing ) finally do non depend on silence. but Zarathustra’s flight exemplifies how rejection of linguistic communication can assist a new ego transcend the restrictions of the old. Contemporary Political Theory 2003 2

Zarathustra’s construct. Zen speculation. and cloistered asceticism all point to hush as a constituent component of the get the better ofing ego. These theoretical accounts are per se individualized ; each characterizes subject-centered creative activity. As such. they are kindred to hush as a immune signifier of power. For Zarathustra. for illustration. merely after he renounces linguistic communication ( the linguistic communication of others ) does he happen a new manner of being. Ultimately. nevertheless. these are silences which reinforce disparity and discontinuity. whose original is that of backdown. Yet if silence can be constituent of single subjectiveness. it can besides function to represent commonalty. The really being of societal silence depends upon its credence. Silence must ever be a collusion. as Tannen ( 1985 ) points out ; societal silence can non be limited to one side. Silences between two or more people must be actively maintained as such.

That any communal silence must be socially preserved is obvious. particularly when instances of those who disturb it are taken into history. e. g. the response of an audience watching a theatrical production or listening to symphonic music. Noise. be it talking or mere rustling. is seen as riotous to the experience of the public presentation ; an audience member who can non larn silence is normally seen as neglecting in his or her topographic point. Nor is this limited to those minutes where duologue emanates from the phase or sounds issue from instruments. An audience member who speaks aloud during a tense emotional draw in a Harold Pinter drama or applauds between motions in a Mozart concerto implicitly breaks an confederation of silence. an confederation to which other audience members ( and on occasion venue staff ) are profoundly invested. This is of class a partial silence ( one on the portion of the audience. non the performing artists ) . but informative nonetheless.

The audience members recognize the necessity of silence on their parts for the experience they desire. and travel to great lengths to protect it. In making so. they create a peculiar sort of audience. with norms and mores: a community. Yet this is a limited illustration. To better research this facet of silence. I turn to two instances which actively and overtly utilize silence to represent a community. cases where silence plays a far more active and recognized function than in the familial illustration with which this essay began. These two illustrations. traditional Quaker meetings and the outstanding John Cage piano piece 40 330 show silence conveying together disparate people in common experience. Quaker worship is famed for being conducted. in the most portion. in silence.

Friends. as Religious society of friendss frequently call themselves. were non the lone Christian group to advance soundless worship ; even within the Catholic Church the apophatic tradition gained strength in the late seventeenth century in the quietist motion led by Miguel de Molinos. ( Both probably inherited the tradition from the Seekers. though their theological underpinnings cause both to be loathe to acknowledge historical influence or case in point ; see Zielinski ( 1975 ) and Fraser ( 1979 ) ) . But Religious society of friendss are the best-known historical and modern-day religious order to idolize in Contemporary Political Theory 2003 2 this manner. and the centrality of silence in their worship and day-to-day life is overtly justified as contributing to theological truth and community creative activity by Quakers themselves. From the denomination’s beginning. this signifier of worship drew considerable attending and unfavorable judgment.

In his Apology. the 1678 explication of Quakerism. Barclay spends considerable clip supporting soundless worship. particularly one time he has declared that ‘there can be nil more opposite to the natural will and wisdom of adult male than this soundless waiting upon God… . ’ ( Barclay. 1831 [ 1692 ] . 353 ; Bauman. 1983. 22 ) Barclay saw silence as a method of decreasing the automatic demands of the ego. leting the word of God to emanate alternatively. Talking. thereby. became representative of all activities of the organic structure. which could through pattern become secondary to listening to God’s voice. ( Bauman. 1983. 22 ) For Quakers. silence has long been the first manner to let the overcoming of the egoistic head. In the words of a 1805 booklet. ‘there is no exercising whatever where ego is more unopen out’ ( Colley. 1805. 4 ) . This is non the silence of constantive individuality ; like most spiritual ceremonials. it is practiced as a community. This silence must take topographic point communally. Barclay argued: it is the ‘duty of all to be Diligent in piecing of themselves together. and when assembled. the great work of one and all ought to be to wait upon God’ ( Brook. 1795. 27 ) .

The Religious society of friendss considered fold vital. even. as was their convention. in the absence of a cardinal speaker/priest/minister. When ‘these who came together. to run into after this mode in Silence. so that they would put together many hours in a deep Silence and Quietness. ’ they practiced silence together. as a community ( Keith. 1687. 17 ) . Those who attempt to speculate silence frequently remark on Quaker pattern. but its communal facet remains systematically overlooked. Even Bauman. in his admirable intervention of the interplay between address and silence in 17thcentury Quakerism. dainties silence as something finally individualistic. ( Bauman. 1983. 22–31 ) However. the literature of the period. though chiefly concerned with the overcoming of ego in the service of ‘the Light. ’ continually refers to the necessity of assembly.

Even in the twentieth century. Friend theologists take strivings to distinguish the experience of individualised silence from the reliable communal worship: silence. argued Hodgkin ( 1919. 79 ) . must originate non from ‘each psyche entirely. but united as a community. ’ Silence. in this societal function. creates the community. It provides emotional. theological. and political nutriment in many of the same ways any denominational organisation does. But instead than sharing a actual symbol as the forming rule of their association ( a Torah. a rood. a curate ) the symbolic unifier in the Quaker instance is the absence of symbol. Silence maps as shared experience. but one whose significance is non needfully ( or even likely ) shared. Silence’s ‘primary object is group unity’ ; the unarticulated Contemporary Political Theory 2003 2 yet immediate experience of silence itself forms the community ( Zielinski. 1975. 23 ) . John Cage’s celebrated piece 40 3300 invokes similar experiences.

A performer sits at a piano for 4 min and 33 s without touching the keys ; an audience hears what would normally be considered incidental noises alternatively of notes from the piano. While non silence in the sense of absence of sound ( Cage held there is no such thing as absolute silence ) . Cage’s piece throws all sound into blunt alleviation. ( Cage. 1961. 8 ) In making so. it encourages the audience to see the nature of music ( the most common reading of 40 3300 ) but besides. more significantly. to go aware of itself as an audience. Cage’s survey of the function of silence within Zen Buddhism convinced him that music’s ideal function was non to one-sidedly pass on emotion or thoughts to hearers. but instead to make consciousness of milieus: in this instance. the milieus of the public presentation hall ( Kostelanetz. 1988 ) . Cage’s involvement in the creative activity and response of music is testament to this focal point: his disfavor of recordings as ‘the terminal of music. ’ his insisting on a mark. page turnings. and note continuances for the public presentation of 40 3300. and his cardinal involvement in the art of mundane experience. ( Soloman. 2000 )

As Sontag has pointed out. the dialectical nature of the silence that Cage created necessitates a environing comprehensiveness of response in the audience ( Sontag. 1969. 10–11 ) . It is as though the silence constitutes the consciousness of the audience as such. both within its selfawareness and in the agreement of its relation to the ‘music. ’ The audience. at that place. transcends its false individuality as inactive receiver and actively partakes in the piece. Cage’s is non a signifier of public presentation art that chiefly relies on daze. or even evildoing. Alternatively. the surprise of 40 3300 emerges in its usage of silence to enable the acknowledgment of the audience as built-in to public presentation. as consisting the piece every bit much as the composer or performing artist. Silence. in this function. does non distance. resist. or overpower ; it forms the artistic and rational footing for the acknowledgment and fundamental law of communal individuality. For Cage’s musical composing. as for the Quaker theological tradition. silence creates community.

These originative productions. from Zarathustra’s self-creation to Barclay’s theological assembly to Cage’s communal experience. do remarkable readings of silence’s maps problematically simplistic. If silence can non be fixed to the remarkable reading of impotence. or of opposition. so neither can it be easy and clearly constituent. No certain manner exists of finding if all members of a community are affected by silence in ways that really create community ; no silence is indisputably formative or reactive. A hunt for the political relations of silence. for the deciding categorization of the power kineticss built-in within silence. is accordingly doomed to neglect. The multiple. fragmental. and overlapping kineticss of silence can be iterated. investigated. and explored. but they can non be fixed or predetermined.

Indeed. Contemporary Political Theory 2003 2 the deductions of this impossibleness may good hold more to make with how political relations gets conceptualized in modern-day theory than with the specialnesss of silence. Possibly power itself. like silence. is radically undetermined. unfastened to procedures of domination. emancipation. and opposition which can ne’er be to the full contained. represented. or comprehended. In decision. it is silence’s coincident opposition to and eliciting of

reading that acts in ways deeply disturbing to those who demand account. It can be upseting for moral and ethical grounds ; Heidegger’s lifelong silence about his attitude toward National Socialism remains a distressing aggravation both for those who wish to support him as an insightful mastermind and those who try to cut down his idea to a pro-Nazi solipsism. ( Lang ( 1996 ) . for illustration. efforts to prevent the inquiry by reasoning that Heidegger’s silence peers guilt. ) It disturbed those environing the Quakers. who every bit tardily as the twentieth century would occupy Quaker houses of worship and cry at the collected Friends ( Hodgkin. 1919. 76 ) . It disturbs those establishments and institutional executors ( including instructors ) who demand verbal interaction as appraising mechanisms. It disturbs exactly because the ideal of crystalline address is the presumed manner of engagement. in our cultural patterns. a criterion to which silence is non reducible. Both the creative activity of community and the break of organisation comprise silence’s constituent facets.

Each of these signifiers are linked to hush as oppressive or immune power. but silence does non finally. needfully execute any one of these maps. Or. more decently. silence does non execute merely one of these undertakings in merely one manner. Silence maps as a dialogue of the disparate and the common. but like any true dialogue it takes more than one way and more than one significance. In silence. as in few other mechanisms. individualism. incommensurability. and community coexist. Notes 1 My thanks to Jane Bennett. Melissa Orlie. Kathy Ferguson. Carolyn Eichner. Carolyn DiPalma. William Connolly. Verity Smith. Cheryl Hall. Matthew Moore. Raia Prokhovnik. and two anon. referees for Contemporary Political Theory whose treatments ( and occasional silences ) have been peculiarly felicitous. My thanks besides to Pendle Hill ( Pennsylvania ) and Swarthmore College. whose aggregations of Quaker literature proved priceless.

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