The Politics of Silence
Researcher: Mónica Brito Vieira
Funder: British Academy, Mid-Career Fellowship
From deliberative democracy to participatory politics, democratic theory has overwhelmingly focused on voice, speech, and discourse. Speech, however, cannot be intelligible unless permeated by silence. Pauses between words, their duration and location, are as meaningful and consequential as words themselves. But silence is more than what makes voice possible.
It is a political category in its own right. As we do things with words, so silence allows us to act politically. Silence can acquiesce to power as well as deploy it. It can claim authority as well as constitute community. Besides interpreting what is said, one needs therefore to realize what was left unsaid, what silences speech harbours, and what one can do by refusing to speak. What powers and potentials lie in silence? This project aims at contributing to respond to this question.