Silence

This thesis examines seven films from the cinemas of Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky—Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957), Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), and The Silence (1963), and Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), Nostalghia (1983), and The Sacrifice (1986).

These films were chosen as they represent the deepest periods of two directors’ engagements with the possible death of God and the subsequent loss of intrinsic existential meaning—topics with which this thesis is principally concerned.

As a starting point, this thesis argues that the films present the silence of God as the primary indicator of God’s absence from the human world. Becoming aware of this silence thus causes one to interrogate religious certainties which have hitherto been taken to be timeless and true. This thesis then contends that, when faced with this silence and its implications, Bergman desperately sought evidence of God’s existence while Tarkovsky unyieldingly maintained an attitude of faith.

The directors’ progressions toward these contrasting positions are evident through the uses of sound elements in their films. As Bergman unsuccessfully pursued evidence of God’s existence, the soundscapes in his four films become increasingly minimal. The sparse use of sound reveals Bergman’s conception of a Godless void. On the other hand, metaphysical silence in Tarkovsky’s films was not perceived as emptiness. Instead, “silence” in his films was, paradoxically, often depicted through complex layers of sounds. Presented as manifestations of the metaphysical, the sounds of “silence” in Tarkovsky’s films consequently become affirmations of faith.

Through this sound-based approach to film analysis, this thesis sets out to explain why Bergman and Tarkovsky understood metaphysical silence so differently by examining how they portrayed literal silences.

Encountering the Past within the Present: Modern Experiences of Time examines different encounters with the past from within the present-whether as commemoration, nostalgia, silence, ghostly haunting or combinations thereof. Taking its cue from Hannah Arendt's definition of the present as a time span lying between past and future, the author reflects on the old philosophical question of how to live the good life-not only with others who are physically with us but also with those whose presence is ghostly and liminal. While tradition may no longer command the same authority as it did in antiquity or the middle ages, individuals are by no means severed from the past. Rather, nostalgic longing for bygone times and traumatic preoccupation with painful historical events demonstrate the vitality of the past within the present. Divided into three parts, chapters examine ways in which the legacies of World War II, the Holocaust and communism have been remembered after 1945 and 1989. Maintaining a sustained reflection on the nexus of memory, modernity and time in tandem with ancient questions of responsibility for one another and the world, the volume contributes to the growing field of memory studies from a philosophical perspective. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory and philosophy with interests in collective memory and heritage.

Discussions of “silent cinema” have generally focused on films made during the silent era (1894–1929). Even after the spread of synchronized sound, however, several experimental filmmakers created films without soundtracks, purely visual experiences that challenged cinema’s status as a multisensory medium. This article gives close attention to Stan Brakhage’s 1959 film "Window Water Baby Moving" as a way of outlining
some of the effects of cinematic silence, such as aesthetic ambiguity and a heightened awareness of cinema’s visual rhythms.

The essay explores how silence represents a «feminine language» that communicates through a non-uttered voice. The analysis of silence is here conducted in performance art practice by focussing on the work of Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo: by using her works, the essay shows how the artist bears witness to trauma and to gender-related violence. This investigation approaches silent performance as capable of articulating and triggering both ethical and political considerations.

This article try to demonstrate how the silence takes shape : it becomes a dangerous character against whom the narrator has to act. In The Children’s Chamber, the silence is at first an ally, helping the young Georges to resist to the other children who want him to talk. Then it becomes a dangerous character who takes more and more space : the adulte who spies the children from the begining of the novel has to interrumpt their game in order to stop the silence.

This chapter investigates whether the Holocaust was the catalyst for the adoption of a number of seminal texts in the postwar 'human rights revolution', including the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). An examination of published and archival source material reveals that the negotiations over the drafting of these documents were marked by a total or near-total silence on the mass murder of Jews. The article concludes with an analysis of why during the drafting process the framers of these texts, including Jewish delegates whose family members had been killed in the Holocaust, refrained from invoking the slaughter of European Jewry at the same time as they called attention to other Nazi crimes.

[For a more in-depth analysis of the Holocaust origins of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, see my 2012 article in the Journal of Genocide Research]

Analysis of Cage’s Silence is motivated by a question of the possibility to hear silence. Analysis benefits from Cage’s claim of the impossibility to hear silence when it is understood as an absence of sound as well as from further considerations in which Cage does not refrain from using the perspective of perceptible silence. A moment of expectation of a listener who have their idea of silence before they begin to listen, is brought into account. The impossibility to hear an absence of sound is interpreted as an answer to two related questions: if there is silence and how it is perceptible. The explication of these is the main subject of this text.

Nasledujúca úvaha o tichu a Johnovi Cageovi je  motivovaná otázkou, či môžeme počuť ticho a aké sú dôvody toho, keď tvrdíme, že nie alebo áno. Cage nám ponúka dve odlišné vysvetlenia, prečo nemôžeme počuť ticho, ak ho chápeme ako absenciu zvuku (čo je jeho vlastný pôvodný návrh). Za prvé, ticho nie je absenciou zvuku (revízia pôvodného návrhu), za druhé, aj keby ticho bolo absenciou zvuku, nie je možné ju počuť (hlbšia analýza). Cage v Silence redefinuje pojem ticha: ticho nie je počuteľné, ale je vnímateľné ako trvanie nezámerných zvukov. Tým sa problém ticha skomplikuje o potrebu skúmať rolu pozorovateľa ticha-pozornosti, zameranosti, chcenia a očakávania ticha. Cageove úvahy tak môžeme chápať ako príspevok k súčasnej filozofickej diskusii o absenciách, ktorej hlavným problémom je práve možnosť vnímať absenciu.

This article proposes a movement between two sorts of dependency in the secretive bonds of violent men. The first forges an interdependent set of relations between mafia men, independent of the state; the second arises as a dependency of these former mafiosi on the state in order to break the interdependencies that formerly made them as mafia men. In this ethnographic and oral history narrative, we first witness a dyadic, homosocial relation between two violent men that forges a masculinised interdependence binding the protagonists of this story together as they share a secret. We then encounter the break-up of this interdependency amid local moral outrage over betrayal and violence, and its substitution by a strong dependence on the state. Through a microsociology that delves into a history of relations, the article thus shows how the subjects of this story shift from one set of dependencies to another. The essay critically revisits discussions of dependency, especially on the state, underscoring the missing element of dependency in the making and breaking of bonds in a secretive male brotherhood.

Tension between the ideal of analytic neutrality — although conceived and applied in various ways — and the putative danger of political neutrality is intrinsic to psychoanalytic investigations of culture and society. It presents itself with urgency in times of social conflict, especially when such conflict is characterized by or framed in terms of victimization, but it has not been a subject of rigorous debate. That the tension between analytic and political neutrality has not been widely examined might mean that when analysts engage in scholarly work outside of clinical settings (e.g., writing books or papers), we adopt a different set of norms to guide our behavior, norms that do not include whatever attitude of neutrality we may observe in the consulting room. 1 But it might also mean that this tension is a site of resistance, that we are unwilling to look closely at a difficult aspect of our work because we expect it to yield uncomfortable experience. Of course, this resistance may be largely unconscious, leading us to miss or mistake the meanings and consequences of our positions. Analytic Neutrality Due to limitations of space, in this essay I do not review the long history or many variations of the idea of analytic neutrality. There remains a healthy discourse on the subject, particularly as it pertains to the timing and nature of interpretations, the self-presence or self-absence of the analyst, and the establishment of an appropriate working atmosphere (see e.

The aim of this draft paper is to investigate the claim of the inhabitants of Farnham, Surrey, that the first observance of the Two Minutes’ Silence was held in their town at 11 a.m. on Saturday, 10th May 1916, 3½ years before the first national Two Minutes’ Silence on Tuesday, 11th November 1919.  My methodology will be to analyse and contrast the intentions expressed in respect of the planning of Farnham’s silence plus aspects of the observance itself with those of the national silence, with particular reference to the contextual setting and framework, intended purpose, and aural shape and structure of each.

Este artículo analiza el poemario del manchego José Corredor-Matheos, Sin ruido (2013), desde la óptica de la lítote como figura de atenuación y, con mayor alcance, como meca-nismo que subsume ciertos rasgos transversales característicos de la poética de madu-rez del autor. Dichos rasgos redundan en la coherencia de su poética y el compromiso con la poesía de la simplicidad y el despojamiento, en su ubicación en las formas y con las formas, y en la exploración de la negación como mecanismo de profundización semántica y ampliación de matices ante la contundencia de la vejez y la muerte.

This paper analyzes Sin ruido (2013), the poetry book by the Spanish poet from Castile-La Mancha, José Corredor-Matheos. Litotes is approached both as a figure for attenuation and, beyond that, as a mechanism that subsumes certain distinctive traits of his poetics across his most mature production. Such traits reinforce the author's consistency and his commitment to the poetry of simplicity and divestment, its positioning in form and with form, and the exploration of the negative as a device for semantic enhancement and enrichment of nuance when facing old age and death.

The amount of new semantic content circulated in a society is limited by implicit norms and explicit rules. Belonging to a community means knowing, mastering, and even interiorizing such restrictions. Some of them are imposed by economy, as in the case of copyright, some by moral, as with pornography, and some for political reasons. In times of international tension such restrictions are tightened, giving rise to state ideologies and rhetorics of taciturnity. The essay explores those that came about in Italy, German, and Japan during World War II but also those that were circulated in their democratic opposers, USA and UK. The study seeks to show the relevance of a semiotic analysis of this corpus of propaganda materials not only for the sake of historical knowledge but also so as to cast new light on urgent present-day issues concerning both private and public conversation.

The work of Toshio Hosokawa (born 1955 in Hiroshima) exemplifies a connection between silence and the sphere of the sacred which is characteristic of Far East cultures. The goal of this paper is to determine the role of silence in the work of Hosokawa in the light of Japanese tradition, with particular reference to Zen Buddhism. The article discusses chosen aspects of the composer’s oeuvre already mentioned in the research, but present also in theoretical and aesthetic texts, interviews and commentaries provided by the composer himself. These elements are, inter alia, traditional Japanese music (gagaku, shōmyō, shakuhachi music), calligraphy, dō arts, ma principle, breath, and the nonlinear model of time or the concept of emptiness.

This paper appeared in the International Encyclopedia of Strategic Communication, published in 2018.

Silence, when used in a scholarly or professional context, can take a variety of meanings. It might refer to groups or individuals who have involuntarily lost their ability to speak or to have their voices heard. However, some actors elect to remain silent to gain strategic advantage. This study is focused on those instances in which an intentional choice is made to remain silent. Strategic silence is the choice of an empowered actor who remains silent in an attempt to advance a strategic interest. This silence need not be complete—it can involve the actor saying less than he or she might have said, saying it through surrogates, or otherwise delivering a message in a lower-profile context than he or she might have. Strategic silence can be employed regardless of field. Billings and Cedergren (2015) discussed the possibility of a company using strategic silence to enhance the timing of earnings reports. Udeze, Ekwe, and Chukwuma (2013) also noted that strategic silence is frequently employed as a tool of interpersonal communication. However, much of the existing work in this area—the study of silence as a strategic choice rather than a silence which is enforced on an individual or group—comes in the area of political communication. Brummett (1980, p. 289) defined " political strategic silence " as " the refusal of a public figure to communicate verbally when that refusal (1) violates expectations, (2) draws public attributions of fairly predictable meanings, and (3) seems intentional and directed at an audience. " While Brummett was writing specifically about the political context, there is no reason that his definition must be limited to that field. Actors in virtually any field can use a strategic silence when otherwise empowered to speak. A silence becomes strategic because something else was expected. Understanding the notion of something else being expected calls for examples of what silences would and would not be strategic. For example, a corporation which does not disclose a new product when anticipated might well be employing a strategic silence. Corporate leaders might judge it in their interests to say nothing, or to say very little, in order to build anticipation about the new product, or to withhold information from competitors, or to prioritize a different product, or for a whole host of other reasons. On the other hand, a corporation which does not issue a press release with the lunch menu in their cafeteria would be practicing a much more ordinary silence. Very few outside the company would have an interest in the matter, and very few would expect the information to be released. Similarly, if the organization was under a legal order for some reason their silence would not be strategic—it would be externally imposed. An actor must be empowered and expected to speak before his or her silence becomes strategic.

This story opens with the post-disaster setting of "Caiseas Blues" [reprinted in Best Small Fictions, Sonder Press 2020; adapted from an unfinished novel "A Terrible Racket"]. The tale breaks ground in its portrayal of senior sexuality, and its unique use of scripture as an intertext. In a locale in which much of what the characters hold dear has been taken from them, the strange relationship between the matriarch Marta and her invalid husband Gabriel is revealed. Marta plays a God-like role in putting Gabriel, her angel, through the paces. But a chat with her daughter Isabel reveals the cruel irony of hearing everything, but never being able to speak. The epiphany moves Marta to what Gabe interprets as a sort of penance. [CORRECTED--restores unauthorized cuts made by journal from Sections 4-5].

When I grew up in Israel, as an Israeli Jew, the Holocaust enveloped us all the time. But as I had no other experiences, I was never actually aware of it. My mother would never listen to Wagner. We did not buy German products and horrid stories were floating around; those stories may have just floated around, but their full emotional content was never addressed directly. The message was clear: the Germans were the bad guys and the Jews were the good guys. We lived in this simple dichotomy of bad people and good people. When I was a teenager, I realized that I lived on two planets, and I seriously struggled to integrate and make sense of my life. One was the reality in which I went to school in a democratic, free Jewish country, had friends and felt that I had all options open to me as a proud young Jewish person. The other planet was in the shadow of the Holocaust, where food could disappear at any moment, and I had to carry mountains of it on a regular basis. A planet where I was force-fed just in case it all happened again, where dangerous people could always reappear from the undefined past. Where the bodies of people in the shadows were reappearing in my life as disembodied souls, pulling me with their emaciated hands towards the dark world of helplessness and depression. One planet was the here and now. The second was in the Holocaust, many years ago. We lived the past during the now in a strange and distorted way, stuck in transposition. In mathematics, transposition is " a permutation which exchanges two elements and keeps all others fixed " (Wikipedia). The two elements in my life that had seemingly been exchanged were the Now and Then-in-the-Past – a past I never lived through, their reality. A past full of fears and terrors that were passed down to me via transgenerational and intergeneration transmission, mainly from my mother. It pushed me to start to make sense of my life, to make sense of living on those two planets, as maddening as it felt. Back then, I was sometimes unsure of what was real and I could not bridge between the different parts of my life. This experience would later send me on a long expedition of

“Be silent, that is my order”. The problem of silence in Abraham Heschel’s works

The problem of silence penetrates Abraham Heschel’s entire creative output, beginning with his youthful poetic attempts and up to his most recent studies on the philosophy of Judaism. Silence appears to be much more appropriate than speech in the face of the inaccuracy of language as the highest form of the cult is the prayer of silence and hope. According to Heschel, this is best expressed by the psalms and prophetic books of the Old Testament. Whatever we may say in order to adore and praise the Lord, our statements will always contain something that cannot apply to God. Words are not needed in the process of cognition, they are necessary only when we wish to convey our ideas to others. From this perspective silence appears to be ontologically integral in all experiences of that which is existentially significant. In a certain sense, Heschel notes, the liturgy is a higher form of silence. Man is silent – he does not enunciate his own words; the enunciation of consecrated words is in essence listening to their message, says the ghost of Israel: “I” is silent. Similarly in prayer, the essence of which is based, de facto, on listening, and not on speaking (it should be remembered that the Hebrew word tefila “prayer” originates from the verb lehitpalel – “to check oneself”). Silence is not only refraining from speaking; you can enunciate words out loud but be deeply silenced on the inside. Attacking the so-called dogma on the complete muteness of God in the world, which he refers to as appalling slander besides, Heschel asked: Why should we assume that God always surrounds Himself with silence? If the world is in essence His masterpiece, is it not credible that elements of His speech would exist in His work? The issue of silence also appears in Heschel’s work quite frequently in association with the suffering of Israel and the tragedy of the Shoah.

This article examines narratives of “ghosting”—the act of cutting off all contact with someone without explanation—in three 21st-century novels, namely Kathrin Röggla’s wir schlafen nicht (2004), Olga Grjasnowa’s Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt (2012), and Ronja von Rönne’s Wir kommen (2016). While the relatively recent phenomenon has received increased attention in the popular press as well as in psychology and sociology, it has remained unrecognized in the field of literary studies. This study remedies this gap by focusing on scenes of noncommunication and disconnection against the backdrop of digital imperatives of availability and connectivity. In particular, it highlights narrative techniques that resemble ghosting such as open endings that resist closure, monologues that communicate unidirectionally, featureless characters that lack responsibility, and fragmentary writing that consists of informational gaps. Rethinking disappearances in the digital age, contemporary literature ultimately reflects on its own mediality.

A bakhtinian approach to discursive study about silence. Firstly, the paper makes a historical discussion of the author´s concept, since his doctoral thesis. Afterwards, some assumptions are presented and, finally, the concept of silence in a bakhtinian way is detailed.

In conversation with Arvo Pärt Enzo Restagno rightly noted: ‘I believe that a real point of contact between Japanese musical tradition and your music is to be found in the role that silence plays in both.’ Indeed, the comparison of musical aesthetics of Pärt and Toshio Hosokawa, who represents the musical tradition of Japan, do exhibit many surprising similarities. Neither of them would see silence as absence of sound. It constitutes an important element of thinking about music and creating the pieces. For both of them silence may be connected with the sphere of the sacred, the non-linear model of time, the practice of meditation (metaphors of breath) and concentration. The last one is something they practice as composers while writing music, and something they expect from performers and listeners of their pieces. Both artists entitled their entire works or parts of some compositions making some references to silence. It is important, however, to remember the difference in perception of silence by the traditions to which the composers ascribe to (Hesychasm and Zen Buddhism).

The recent sounds of BLM protests can be thought of as reconstituting George Floyd's extinguished voice - amplifying his solitary protest against restraint through creating a ruckus that interrupted the wider silencing of Black voices. UK Grime and Rap music is another way in which these silences are being challenged today, in the face of all the attempts to police it and close it down, and to restrict the artistic freedom of young Black musicians, especially as expressed in Drill music. Policing Black sound is part of the wider policing of the black body - and restrictions on Black music are discussed in relation to the many laws on anti-social behaviour that have been enacted since New Labour's first creation of ASBOs. David Starkey's fear about whites becoming black is linked to a long-held fear on the right about the potentially corrupting effect of Black music on white listeners, and its perceived threat to the status quo - the spread of a 'dub virus'.

The recent sounds of BLM protests can be thought of as reconstituting George Floyd’s extinguished voice - amplifying his solitary protest against restraint through creating a ruckus that interrupted the wider silencing of Black voices. UK Grime and Rap music is another way in which these silences are being challenged today, in the face of all the attempts to police it and close it down, and to restrict the artistic freedom of young Black musicians, especially as expressed in Drill music. Policing Black sound is part of the wider policing of the black body - and restrictions on Black music are discussed in relation to the many laws on anti-social behaviour that have been enacted since New Labour’s first creation of ASBOs. David Starkey’s fear about whites becoming black is linked to a long-held fear on the right about the potentially corrupting effect of Black music on white listeners, and its perceived threat to the status quo - the spread of a ‘dub virus’.

Of things not said incorporates prose and theory, non-fiction and interpieces, in an ongoing dialogue about writing and an author’s reflections on creating fiction.  As a way of making sense of silence and of things not said this non-fiction essay looks at how a writer engages with silence when researching a person in their absence. The piece follows the author’s own writing process from the initial proposal to write about her father’s ‘immigrant journey’ (Hron 2009) and the difficulties of such a task as a result of past trauma and his death. Within the essay are interpieces of spoken and unspoken communications, of individual and familial memories which have been ‘shared’, ‘corrected … – and last not least, written down’ (Assman cited in Hirsch 2008). Re-examining silence is an empowering tool for second-generation immigrants and writers to observe what is and cannot be expressed. Being able to mediate her father’s silence and re-interpret ‘what is unsaid’ (Pinter 2003) this essay creates a space for creative thoughts to emerge in fiction.

This chapter makes three central claims: first, that the term consensus has been used to identify two different phenomena, mental consensus and interactional consensus; second, that unanimity (everyone agrees) and consensus (no one disagrees) are two distinct modes of collective decision-making and, third, that consensus is a mode of decision-making that can be practiced in different ways, thus making it necessary to distinguish different types of consensus when analyzing (and practicing) consensus decision-making: imposed consensus, acclaimed consensus, basic consensus, and deliberative consensus.
These for types of consensus vary in their degree of openness towards dissenting voices. In an imposed consensus, it is simply claimed (e.g. by the meeting chair) that consensus has been reached with no opportunity for the meeting participants to oppose this claim. In an acclaimed consensus, in contrast, there is an explicit opportunity for participants to express their views, but its official purpose is not to express dissent but consent. In basic consensus participants are explicitly asked if there is anyone who disagrees and a stretch of audible silence passes before the consensual decision is confirmed. Deliberative consensus, finally, not only gives participants the opportunity to express dissent, but actively encourages that dissent is articulated in order to make sure that no one is silenced.

"Silence as a cultural phenomenon has been the subject of many linguistic theories. In contrast to the 1970s, when absence of speech was mostly seen as a lack of meaning and intention, later studies revealed that silence was anything but void. In Turkey’s rather patriarchal society where the place of women, especially in rural regions, is often expected to be in the background, silence sometimes becomes eloquent, being a manifestation of traumatic experiences or of an uncomplaining acceptance of one’s fate. However, silence can also be used as a means of creating psychological pressure, thus turning into a powerful weapon. For a thorough analysis of the silence that is characteristic of female characters in Ayfer Tunç’s novel Dünya Ağrısı, some theoretical concepts are helpful. Lakoff ’s feminist approach that creates a link between women’s silence and their invisibility in certain societies is relevant in this context. Sperber and Wilson, Johannesen, Davies, Dauenhauer, Tannen, Ephratt, Fivush and many others provide additional insights into the eloquent aspects of intentional silence. A few personal thoughts Ayfer Tunç shared with me concerning the role of her silent female characters were also taken into account in this article."

On chercherait en vain dans l’œuvre de Platon des développements explicites sur le silence. Mais le génie littéraire de Platon lui fait une place, et la mise en scène des dialogues, comme les interactions des personnages, mettent en jeu différentes figures du silence par lesquelles se dévoilent d’autres aspects des réflexions socratico-platoniciennes sur le langage. Les silences du philosophe s’opposent, en effet, à ceux de ses interlocuteurs, autant que la pratique philosophique du dialogue aux discours sophistiques. Car le silence véritable, celui du philosophe, n’est pas que l’absence de voix, ni même simplement l’attente d’une parole à venir, mais, en dernière analyse, un retour à la source du logos : la pensée et l’être même.

Ένα σχετικά άγνωστο κείμενο, αδικαιολόγητα σε σχέση με την σπουδαιότητα του. Σε αυτήν την απολαυστική επιστολή ο Πλάτωνας κάνει έναν απολογισμό της πολυτάραχης ζωής του, σε 4 χρόνια θα πεθάνει κι έκτοτε τους απολογισμούς και τις ερμηνείες θα τις κάνουν άλλοι. Στο κείμενο αυτό ο Πλάτωνας ακούγεται πρωτοπρόσωπος να εξηγεί ή να απολογείται. Σε όλο το έργο του μιλά σαν θεατρικός συγγραφέας, πάντα δυσδιάκριτος μέσα στα πρόσωπα που δημιουργεί, φευγαλέος, ποτέ ξεκάθαρος και ευθύς. Εδώ μπορούμε να ακούσουμε την φωνή του και μέσα στο κείμενο βλέπουμε πως ο άνθρωπος που «τα είπε όλα» υποστηρίζει πως τα σπουδαία πράγματα δεν μπορούν να ειπωθούν. Σε γενικές γραμμές το κείμενο δεν χρειάζεται ειδικές φιλοσοφικές γνώσεις για να το παρακολουθήσει κανείς.

My Name is Adam is about the politics of telling and hearing, seeing and blindness, truth and the possibility of
finding it. It is about the impossibility of linear stories, the problems of history, the power of fiction, and the many many registers of silence.