Poetics of Silence

Depuis les années quatre-vingt-dix, des artistes plasticiens choisissent de faire œuvre à partir d’un témoignage filmé. Ils partent ainsi à la rencontre de personnes qu’ils invitent à se raconter face caméra, investissent la réalité pour en prélever images et paroles, et en explorent les modalités de représentation. Les vidéos qui résultent de ce processus de création singulier se situent d'emblée dans une tradition artistique du portrait, portrait auquel une voix vient s'adosser. Sur le plan formel, les esthétiques de la parole filmée en art contemporain portent l’empreinte de leurs représentations audiovisuelles communes. Dans un contexte médiatique caractérisé par la surreprésentation du récit parlé et incarné, nous sommes devenus familiers de l’association d’un visage et d’une voix composant l’image sonore d’un sujet se racontant. Si le rapport qu’entretiennent ces deux éléments peut sembler prédéterminé par l’enregistrement, et fixement établi au regard des conventions audiovisuelles, nous analyserons ici la manière dont les artistes contemporains expérimentent les relations possibles entre voix et corps, et conçoivent des stratégies plastiques susceptibles de déconstruire ces conventions. Certains artistes brisent le paradigme du synchronisme (Gillian Wearing), composent des montages associant ou confrontant un récit sonore à des images silencieuses de sources différentes (Justine Pluvinage), tendent vers une perte radicale de la physicalité du narrateur, ou encore proposent l’expérience limite de la monstration d’un corps silencieux (Esther Shalev-Gerz). A travers ces exemples, nous examinerons comment, à travers la disjonction, la cassure et l’absence, les portraits parlants des plasticiens explorent les possibles d’une dialectique voix-silence et texte-corps, tout en participant à une reconsidération des postures de réception d’une parole filmée.

Utjecaj klasične glazbe i skladatelja poput Skrjabina i Wagnera vidljiv je u različitim segmentima Pasternakova pjesničkoga jezika. Muzikalnost – ritam, melodija, zvuk, intonacija, ali i šutnja – također je ključna karakteristika estetskoga jezika u Pasternakovom Doktoru Živagu, jednom od najvažnijih djela o padu imperijalne Rusije i kraju monarhije u krvavom ratu i revolucijama ikada napisanom. Rad istražuje neke aspekte odnosa između umjetnosti, povijesnog nasilja, rata i revolucija, odnosno između imaginarnog svijeta revolucionarne (sovjetske) Rusije u Doktoru Živagu i prikazivačkih praksi tih događaja ne kroz buku mase i grada nego duge i duboke trenutke šutnje. Dok je prikaz Oktobarske revolucije kao događaja obilježenog intenzivnim zvukovima, kakofonijom (kao što je Blok pisao u svom programatskom eseju Inteligencija i revolucija, piščeva je dužnost stvoriti nove književne oblike i nov književni jezik zahvaćanjem nadnaravne glazbe Revolucije), Pasternakova (ili, točnije, Živagova) revolucija u Doktoru Živagu često je prikazana kroz trenutke šutnje ili junakova međusobna šaputanja. Polazeći od teze da su i zvuk i šutnja istodobno i tjelesna stanja, ali i estetska i kulturna sredstva (postupci), cilj je rada ponuditi odgovore na sljedeća pitanja. Što znače zvukovi, šutnja i šapati kao metafore nasilja, rata i revolucije u Pasternakovu Doktoru Živagu? Posebice s obzirom na “paradoksalnu materijalnost” (Ch. Miller) šutnje, gdje to stanje potpune nijemosti i okamenjenosti istodobno simbolizira prazninu – ali i puninu, bestežinstvo – ali i težinu, te se, kako dalje Miller navodi, “može (…) promatrati istodobno kao bestežinsko stanje (rastakanje korporalnih granica) i kinetičko bogatstvo”, rad analizira simboličko značenje momenata šutnje u Pasternakovu romanu. Je li Pasternakova u romanu naširoko i duboko razvedena “retorika šutnje” (C. Glenn) označitelj povlačenja nekih romanesknih junaka iz vihora revolucionarne Rusije u njihove vlastite, privatne, intimne svjetove introspekcije i autorefleksije, ili je riječ o snažnom i beskompromisnom otporu protiv popularnog prikaza revolucije kao univerzalnog projekta političke i kulturne emancipacije i slobode? Drugim riječima, može li se Pasternakova “retorika šutnje” u Doktoru Živagu tumačiti kao stanje punoće, spoznaje, znanja (S. Sontag), odnosno kao metoda radikalnog govora šutljivih protagonista, a ne kao iskaz njihove (aristokratske) pasivnosti i nezainteresiranosti?

Glaubt man den gängigen Drehbuchtheorien, gibt es insgesamt nicht mehr als zwanzig universale Geschichten zu erzählen, deren Variationen mit unermüdlichem Drang stets neu aufgerollt werden. So lassen sich jeder Handlung Grundthemen wie Suche, Abenteuer, Verfolgung, Rivalität, Versuchung, Metamorphose, Liebe, Grenzerfahrung u.a.m. zuordnen. 1 Zu den altbekannten Mustern von Handlungsverläufen lassen sich kaum neue hinzu erfinden, sodass die (Film-)Kunst ihren Fokus zunehmend von der erzählten Geschichte auf die jeweils angewandten Erzählstrategien verschoben hat. Wirft man einen Blick auf das internationale Autorenkino der letzten Jahrzehnte, lässt sich eine Tendenz ausmachen, die sich ganz augenscheinlich vom episch-narrativen Handlungsfilm hin zu einer selbstreflektierenden Filmsprache entwickelt. Verstärkt werden Sehkonventionen hinterfragt und alte Geschichten auf ungewohnte Weise inszeniert. Wird das Interesse vom Inhalt auf die Form gelenkt, tritt das Medium selbst in Erscheinung und wird als solches auf seine spezifischen Möglichkeiten der Darstellung untersucht. 2 Die ursprüngliche Bezeichnung für ‚Filmen' lautet Kinematographie, eine Ableitung des griechischen Wortes kinema für Bewegung. In der Abgrenzung von anderen Kunstformen wie der Fotografie, behauptet sich das ‚Wesen' der sogenannten siebten Kunst durch den Reiz der bewegten Bilder. I. Die nonverbale Sprache des Films I.I Lakonie und Verfremdung bei Roy Andersson Ein alter Mann schlurft mithilfe eines Rollators die Straße entlang, er zieht einen Dackel hinter sich her. Dass das Tier in seine Leine verwickelt, auf dem Rücken liegend, über den Gehsteig geschleift wird, bemerkt er nicht. Alles, was man hört, ist das klägliche Winseln des Hundes. In einer der nächsten Szenen des Episodenfilms DAS JÜNGSTE GEWITTER (2007) werden wir 1 Vgl. Ronald TOBIAS, 20 Master Plots (and how to build them), Cincinnati 1993. 2 Vgl. Marcus STIGLEGGER, "Die Traumzeit der Liebenden", in: Roman Mauer (Hg.), Wong Kar-Wai. Filmpoet im Hongkong-Kino (Film-Konzepte, Heft 12), München 2008, 73-81, 73. 2 Zeuge, wie eine beleibte Frau, nur mit einem Pickelhelm "bekleidet", mit einem dürren Mann kopuliert und den Akt mit lautem Stöhnen zu genießen scheint. Er hingegen schaut, teilnahmslos unter ihr auf dem Bett liegend, in die Kamera und beschwert sich über seine schlecht laufenden Finanzinvestitionen. Schnitt. Ein Mann sitzt im bürgerlichen Wohnzimmer und schaut in die vollkommen statische Kamera. Wie in den meisten anderen Szenen gibt es keinerlei Kamerafahrten und keine Nahaufnahmen. Übersichtlich und streng durchkomponiert präsentiert sich der Raum in milchigen, ungesättigten Farben. Die offenstehende Wohnzimmertür verleiht dem tableau vivant Tiefe, das hereinfallende Licht des Flures verbreitet einen leuchtenden Schimmer und verweist auf die Anwesenheit weiterer Personen. Der Mann sitzt still, nichts passiert, bis sich ein kurzer Dialog zwischen ihm und einer Frau, die kurz in der Tür erscheint, ergibt. Sie: "Es ist schon fast halb sechs!" Er: "Ja, was soll ich dazu sagen?" Schweigen. Er: "Schön, schön!" -Ende der Szene. Der skandinavische Regisseur Roy Andersson zeigt uns in seiner Komödie in zahlreichen Varianten Szenen gescheiterter Kommunikation, die man aufgrund ihrer vollkommenen Absurdität so selten in Filmen zu sehen bekommt. Die Reglosigkeit der Kamera, die kaum merklich einige Male doch heranzoomt, die triste, in nebeligtrübe Farben getauchte Kulisse sowie das starre, reduzierte Spiel der Darsteller schaffen eine trostlose Atmosphäre. Die Protagonisten der nahezu fünfzig Episoden verharren in der vollkommenen Tristesse eines surrealistisch verfremdeten Göteborgs. Oft befinden sich die Figuren bereits bei Aufblende der Szenarien wie festgewachsen in ihrer Position, meist mit Blick auf den Zuschauer. Roy Andersson unterläuft gängige dramaturgische Erwartungen, indem er das Geschehen im Vordergrund auf ein Minimum reduziert. Seine Figuren haben sich nichts mehr zu sagen, hören einander nicht zu, missverstehen sich und schweigen sich an. Grüppchenweise und apathisch, jedoch nicht unbedingt schlecht gelaunt schlurfen, warten, starren Anderssons Figuren vor sich hin und scheitern an der alltäglichsten Kommunikation. Die inhaltslosen und oftmals völlig befremdlichen kurzen Wortpassagen führen die Sprache ad absurdum, sodass der Zuschauer dazu angeregt wird, seine Aufmerksamkeit verstärkt auf die musikalischen und bildgestalterischen Filmmittel zu richten, um einen Zugang zum Geschehen zu finden. Die bewegungslose Kamera schafft hierbei durchkomponierte, an Edward Hopper erinnernde Bildnisse und lässt durch ihre große Schärfentiefe dem Rezipienten die Wahl, sein Augenmerk 3 ebenso auf kleine narrative Details im Hintergrund zu lenken: Bei einer Hinrichtung konsumiert ein teilnahmsloses Publikum Popcorn; die Silhouette einer Altenpflegerin lauscht schweigend dem erfolglosen Gesprächsversuch einer Frau mit ihrer dementen Mutter; eine Straßenbahn fährt laut Plakette Richtung Lehte. 3 Nicht selten verstörend, erlangen die monotonen Szenen durch visuelle Fingerzeige wie diese eine doppeldeutige Schärfe, die sich kaum noch mithilfe eines gängigen Rezeptionsverhalten erfassen lässt. I.II Aki Kaurismäkis lakonische Werke Als Verweigerung üblicher Erwartungshaltungen der Zuschauer durch ein filmisches Erzählen der "Langsamkeit, Ereignislosigkeit und Sprachlosigkeit" 4 beschreibt Natalie Binczek auch das Werk eines anderen skandinavischen Filmemachers. Aki Kaurismäki, der sich gerne selbstironisch bei den internationalen Filmfestivals als betrunkener Kauz inszeniert, steht gleichermaßen wie seine Filme für das Finnische an sich. Doch lässt sich sein Werk nicht allein auf ein nordeuropäisches Klischee von versoffener Trostlosigkeit, Melancholie und Wortkargheit reduzieren. Seine Filme sind geprägt durch eine klare und asketische Formsprache, die eine Ästhetik der Reduktion vertritt, und sie werden nicht selten als Inspiration für Andersson heranzitiert. 5

L'article aborde la manière dont le roman Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein de Marguerite Duras rend compte de l’absolu, se construisant depuis et autour de cette entité, et aménage paradoxalement, de par cet ancrage, le silence comme noyau langagier. Il est ainsi question de mettre en lumière la façon dont l’œuvre tend irrémédiablement vers le silence, celui propre au rêve, à la contemplation, en démontrant qu’il y a un vrai cheminement vers le silence qui est opéré dans le texte et que celui-ci vient en infléchir les structures fondamentales (espace, temps, personnages, narration).

Lien vers l'article, publié en ligne (revue Postures) : http://revuepostures.com/fr/articles/lahouste-28

// PLAN :
> Fragmentation, illimitation, déterritorialisation
> Non-savoir et fantasmagories
> Vers le silence

This article explores how the gendered and racialized representation of muteness is politicized within the current cultural imaginary. It undertakes a media-historical reading of the mute woman as a cultural figure and asks how through this character certain independent films seek to establish cinema as a counterpublic space. Followed by selected readings of a group of films with mute female protagonists, the article embeds the discursive operations of muteness in a broader discussion of identity politics, voice, communication, and silent protest. These discussions are relevant for mediations on mute femininity because they become frameworks within which her muteness serves as a problematic political allegory announcing a lack of participation.

Resumen: En el marco de los desarrollos que alcanza la crítica literaria con el estructu-ralismo, el pos-estructuralismo y las nuevas poéticas experimentales, el presente trabajo parte de la contemporaneidad del poeta francés Stéphane Mallarmé para pensar una teoría del discurso poético. Se aboca, en ese sentido, a considerar la dignidad de la poe-sía en función de la concepción de un interregno para la poesía, presente en la formu-lación original mallarmeana, que aclara además su noción del " Libro ". Abstract: Within the framework of the development reached by the literary criticism with the structuralism and post-structuralism, as well as the new experimental poetics, this work takes as a starting point the contemporaneity of the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé to think about a theory of the poetic speech. In that sense, it is dedicated to consider the dignity of poetry in relation with the conception of an interregnum for poetry , present in the original Mallarméan formulation that also clears his notion of " book " .

Si l’on a coutume de présenter le surréalisme comme un mouvement culturel né sur les ruines de la Première Guerre mondiale, il nous semble important de revenir sur l’imbrication des liens entre la guerre comme expérience vécue et les questionnements d’ordre langagier sur la construction linguistique de la réalité qui en ont découlé. En effet dès le retour des tranchées et la création du mouvement, les surréalistes ont posé la question de savoir s’il fallait dire ou taire la guerre, engageant, au-delà de l'intérêt de la représentation littéraire de la guerre, la question du pouvoir des mots dans les processus de représentation.

"This book explores the phenomenon of silence in schools, considering a wide range of its appearances and uses. Starting from a discussion of the negative and coercive aspects of silence in schools, the discussion moves quickly onto examples of how silence in school environments generates a positive influence in the education of children.

Silence is currently undervalued as a pedagogical tool. Nevertheless it is cost-free and educationally significant. The discussion in this book covers some of the ways in which silence is currently being used in schools through the introduction of meditation, quiet spaces and silent moments and how such uses are enhancing and affecting school experience. The explorations in the book also consider how awareness of silence can be developed to change school cultures, notably towards more democratic and reflective practices.

This book is of interest to head teachers, classroom teachers, policy makers, educational researchers and parents. The conclusions drawn offer useful international applications and can be impactful in many different types of educational setting.

«Io sono innamorato della parola ‘lacuna’; parola squisitamente latina […] Nelle sue tre sillabe si condensa tutto ciò che di bello ed esem-plare ha per me l’antica lingua di Roma: robustezza, pregnanza sonora e semantica, e una capacità di echeggiare per lunghe distanze» (p. 3). «La lacunosità, strutturando l’insieme in un ordine coerente, fornisce un antidoto contro la morte. Ecco la lezione di Orazio: la buona lette-ratura tiene a bada la fine, rinnovando il presente e con questo il pia-cere dell’essere qui e ora», Gardini (p. 79, a proposito dell’Ars poeti-ca).
Quelli citati sono due degli svariati passaggi che Nicola Gardini, docente di italiano e letterature comparate a Oxford, dedica alla lingua e alla letteratura latine nel suo ricco saggio einaudiano, dedicato so-prattutto (ma non solo) alla reticentia, al ‘non-detto’, all’omissione in-tenzionale in letteratura.

This paper actively deals with the notion of silence as an element of absurdity in Harold Pinter’s play “The Dumb Waiter” (1960). In order to discuss this with greater detail, it is important to understand what absurdity is and how it is linked to the theatre of the absurd as well as its
connection to the disenfranchised condition of human existence that ails modern man’s psyche obstructing his route to communication and purpose. Moreover, this paper elaborates on how silence is an element of absurdism diligently offering up a list of five main critics and their
critiques and assessment over the language of silence employed by Pinter as an element of absurdity, and they include: “Poetics of Silence” (1970) by James R. Hollis, “Harold Pinter and The New British Theatre” (1997) by D. Keith Peacock, “Harold Pinter’s Politics: A Silence Beyond Echo” (2005), “Language and Silence” (1987) by Martin Esslin, and “A Question of
Timing” (1995) by Martin S. Regal. Taking all of this into consideration, an analysis of Harold Pinter’s script will be implemented on the basis of silence as an active partaker in this play of
absurdism posing a number of five main quotations that best represent Pinter’s formation of silence as not only a dramatic device, but a much more intense entity with its own voice and motives.

Esta publicação é fruto do colóquio Múltiplo Machado,
realizado pela e na Casa de Leitura Dirce Côrtes Riedel entre
os dias 27 e 30 de abril de 2015 por ocasião do centenário
de nascimento da ilustre professora a quem a casa é dedicada. Propiciando o encontro de intelectuais de renome com o
propósito de estudar e discutir diversos aspectos da obra do
autor mais relevante da nossa literatura, o tema do evento,
na verdade, se revestia de especialíssimo significado, dado que
ao nome da homenageada se associava o do escritor de sua
preferência a cuja obra dedicou-se com esmero ao longo da
vida produzindo trabalhos de reconhecida relevância.

El silencio musical es un concepto que se extiende a lo filosófico, debido a la complejidad de su significación como un elemento vacuo. El trasfondo teórico del silencio en la música permite repensar a su vez el sonido, y abre sus dimensiones ontológicas, metafísicas, comunicativas y semióticas. Conforme a esto, son desarrolladas las funciones comunicativas y expresivas del silencio musical, estableciendo un análisis de las características de las diferentes tipologías de silencio musical existentes en los ámbitos musical y audiovisual. Las relaciones sustanciales entre silencio, música y filosofía describen de esta forma, una abstracción metafísica que trasciende como un fenómeno musical capaz de comunicar en relación con el sonido.

Musical silence is a concept that extends to the philosophical, due to the complexity of its significance as a vacuous element. The theoretical background of silence in music allow to rethink sound in turn, and open their ontological, metaphysical, communicative and semiotic dimensions. According to this, the communicative and expressive functions of musical silence are developed, establishing an analysis of the characteristics of the different types of musical silence existing in the musical and audiovisual fields. The substantial relations between silence, music and philosophy describe in this way, a metaphysical abstraction that trascends as a musical phenomenon able to communicate in relation with sound.

This chapter identifies a typically late antique phenomenon: the emergence of a pervasive “poetics of silence”, involving a metaliterary problematization of language and representation. This phenomenon, reminiscent of the postmodern “linguistic turn”, is not restricted to the field of literature, but can be defined as omnipresent in late antique culture, underlying Augustine’s semiotics, Evagrius Ponticus’ hesychasm, Gregory of Nyssa’s apophatic theology or Pseudo-Dionysius’ negative mysticism. The chapter focuses on the different ways in which this problem (embodied in the metaphor of silence) is tackled by several authors: Sidonius Apollinaris, Fulgentius, Augustine of Hippo, Ausonius, Rutilus Namatianus and the anonymous writer of the Peruigilium Veneris. At times, silence is depicted as the haven of tranquillity which enables literary creation; at other times, it is a threat of dissolution hovering over the fragility of the poet’s work; most often, it is the deep, ultimately unknowable reality beyond the murmuring of words. Despite this variety, there is something common to all these authors: their problematizing approach to human language and their inner distrust of the classical idea of representation, teetering on the brink of collapse amidst the crisis of certainties that shook the very foundations of late antique society.

In the 1990s we witnessed in different countries a trend in experimental music that can be acknowledged as a turn to silence. Such a trend is verified in the musical expression of the Wandelweiser Group; in the Berlin Reductionism style from the Echtzeitmusik scene; on Onkyô scene; in the lowercase/quiet microsound style and others. The noteworthy connection with the silence of 4'33" composed in 1952 by John Cage arouses questions about whether this turn to silence could be a ‘farse’ or if it would be diverse something. The first aim of this research is to 'understand' listening to this 'new silence'. It is observed that the ‘conceptual’ aspect of the silence related to this new trend in experimental music is something exposing lower expression if compared with its 'affective' feature. Thus, we elected a speculative methodology in order to know what the silence of this experimental music 'does' in the listener rather than knowing what that silence 'means' indeed. This selected methodology is based on the Affect Theory, which consists of a turn at the beginning of this century to Baruch Spinoza's philosophy of immanence whose work was restated by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari afterward. The method used is Guattari's meta-modelisation in which the interaction of concepts bears new concepts that, in this way, also allows for the becoming of elements that frequently escape from models based on representation. We argue first that the listening of silence in the current experimental music is a bodily listening, since its silence is affective. In order to arrive at such a viewpoint, we start from an analysis of the shocks of both avant-garde and capitalist manifestations that, although from different fields both express a potential for the investigation of bodily reception. Next, we conceive a notion of bodily reception through the Artaud’s concept of Body-without-Organs. In a third moment we discussed the possibility of a theoretical model that approaches listening for what is beyond sound, that is, a bodily listening of the inaudible sound, pointing to an extended usage proposition of the 'correlation' models of listening by Pierre Schaeffer and Seth Kim - Cohen. Then we present a sequence of researches and artistic works under the prism of the Affect Theory, as well as the concepts of 'productive masochism', 'affective noise' and 'affective
listening'. At last we offer an overview of the current scenario related to silent experimental music that, with the aid of the interaction between the concepts discussed beforehand and as well the discourse of musicians and researchers involved with these musical prospects, it becomes possible to speculate that their affective silence could promote an agency to reestablish the micropolitic capacity of listening which is able to act in the environment. Therefore this research intends to contribute with an investigation on music in the field of Affect Theory and an investigation of affect in the Sound Studies and Musicology.

Na década de 1990 assistimos a uma tendência na música experimental localizada em diferentes países, a qual pode ser reconhecida como uma volta para o silêncio. Essa tendência é identificada na música do coletivo internacional de compositores-performers Wandelweiser com sede na Alemanha, no estilo Berlin Reductionism da cena Echtzeitmusik na cidade de Berlim, no Onkyô na cidade de Tóquio, no estilo lowercase/quiet microsound que é descentralizado geograficamente, além de outros. A notável relação com o silêncio de 4’33” composta em 1952 por John Cage, considerado o criador da música experimental, levanta questões sobre se essa volta para o silêncio poderia ser uma farsa como a recuperação de um dispositivo das vanguardas de meados do século XX ou se ela seria algo diferente disto. O primeiro objetivo deste trabalho é o de ‘compreender’ a escuta desse ‘novo silêncio’. Nota-se que o aspecto conceitual do silêncio dessa nova tendência na música experimental é algo de menor expressão se comparado com o seu aspecto ‘afetivo’. Dessa forma, optou-se por uma metodologia especulativa para saber o que o silêncio da recente música experimental ‘faz’ no ouvinte ao invés de saber o que esse silêncio ‘significa’. A metodologia é fundamentada pela Teoria do Afeto que consiste em uma volta no início deste século para a filosofia da imanência de Baruch Spinoza, ressignificada por Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari e outros. O método utilizado é o de meta-modelização de Guattari em que a interação de conceitos geram novos conceitos desconhecidos que, dessa forma, permite o devir de elementos que frequentemente escapam dos modelos baseados na representação. Argumentamos primeiramente que a escuta do silêncio na recente música experimental é uma escuta corporal, visto que seu silêncio é afetivo. Para chegarmos a tal resultado, partimos inicialmente de uma análise dos choques tanto das manifestações vanguardistas quanto os do mundo capitalista que, embora sejam de domínios diferentes ambos expressam um potencial para o estudo da recepção corporal. Em seguida, definimos uma noção de recepção corporal por meio do conceito de Corpo-sem-Órgãos. Em um terceiro momento discutimos a possibilidade de um modelo teórico que aborde a escuta para o que está além do som, ou seja, uma escuta corporal do som inaudível, indicando um uso estendido dos modelos ‘correlacionistas’ de escuta de Pierre
Schaeffer e de Seth Kim-Cohen. Então apresentamos uma série de pesquisas e trabalhos artísticos sob a luz da Teoria do Afeto, além dos conceitos de ‘masoquismo produtivo’, ‘ruído afetivo’ e ‘escuta afetiva’. Finalmente apresentamos as recentes cenas da música experimental silenciosa que, com o auxílio da interação entre os conceitos discutidos anteriormente e o discurso de músicos e pesquisadores envolvidos com essas cenas torna-se possível especular que o seu silêncio afetivo pode promover um agenciamento para restabelecer a capacidade micropolítica da escuta atuar no ambiente. Essa pesquisa pretende assim contribuir com uma investigação sobre música no campo da Teoria do Afeto e uma investigação do afeto nos campos dos Estudos do Som e da Musicologia.

This fourth in a series of articles seeking a better knowledge of the Archangel Michael will be devoted exclusively to the elusive imperative being taught in the school of Michael in our time: to free thought from language.  All of the studies we have taken up in the last three articles have been presented with the intention of cutting through the natural human tendency to trivialize spiritual matters. When we approach a topic from an overly abstract point of view without concretizing our ideas by bringing them down to earth, we trivialize. When our studies survey spiritual scientific ideas handling those ideas with only earthly sentiments and logic, we also trivialize. In both cases we fail to enliven and spiritualize concepts and therefore fail to address our originality and authenticity that can and ought to be developed in the present age of Michael, in which our own independent, spiritualized, thinking and judgment should guide us to a knowledge of truth in reality. The topic of our present study, which is how to develop the ability to free our thinking from language, is presented as a path to authenticity and as a bulwark against trivialization. It is also presented as an impetus towards the collaboration in spiritual work that must begin to develop in our time to produce the universal spiritual understanding that will culminate in the middle of the sixth cultural epoch.

It's a paper I presented in my Post-grads days in JU on Harold Pinter's last play Mountain Language. It was meant to be a tribute to the playwright who had died that year only.

I upload it as a work in progress piece without a bibliography!

The paper seeks to analyze the political function of silence in Mountain Language not only in terms of the issue of the Kurdish language which is the political context for the composition of the play but also in terms of Pinter's complex response to and critique of realism. I refer to certain performances of the play too in order to further my point. Drawing on Beckett's insight into the torture mechanism, I try to bring out the autonomous outside to the process of torture that is constructed through a silence of resistance. It is also about resisting an imposed notion of liberty and Pinter's fascinating use of words that qualify and inform what I call his political resistance to the signifier. There are passing references to other Pinter plays, especially belonging to his last and overtly political period.

This article analyses the essence and roles of silence in the œuvres of Mallarmé and Valéry. The Mallarmé’s musicality gradually gives way to the silent music of words; poetry is becoming spatial and takes the form of the music score. In the poem Coup de dés it gets up to the incarnation of silence which shows the ideal of the Mallarmé’s musicality; the ideal in which an eye serves to listen. The theme of music and silence reappears in the Valery’s œuvre. In spite of the connection between music and architecture, which can incarnate silence, poetry uses the subjectivism of music and the ambiguity of silence to achieve the ideal of pure art which is hidden in the artist’s interior. Silence as nothingness is the starting point for poetry whereas non-incarnated silence can express the mystical sense of poetry.

Partendo dall'ipotesi che la scrittura platonica possa essere assimilata alla scrittura drammaturgica o teatrale, il presente studio esamina il ruolo filosofico, dialettico e/o protrettico che il silenzio assume all'interno di alcuni dialoghi di Platone. Si analizzano, a tal fine, alcuni esempi desunti dal "Liside", dall'"Eutidemo", dal "Fedone".

Throughout the thesis I take symbolic communication and visual metaphors as starting points for developing a contemporary picture of diverse Craft practices in a small corner of Scotland. As a result, this thesis is both an ethnography of Craft and a craft object, explicitly made to be a theory-laden object of material culture.

Both in its analysis and its subject matter, this thesis aims to question a variety of epistemological regimes found not only in anthropology, but also in the North-East of Scotland. The main argument of this thesis is that in order to understand something about Craft and the experiences of its makers it is important to have an understanding of the ways in which they create that world as meaningful: that is, an understanding of the thirdness (or symbolism) that is an active, generative force in that world. In the following chapters I argue two interwoven points: one, that a stash (collection) is a collection of stash (craft materials) and is also a site of thirdness in which symbolic thought and action are vital. And two: that, as such, stash and the craft world in which it is embedded are well served by an approach to visual anthropology that takes seriously a study of semiotics in which poetics become more than a subject of analysis; poetics are also allowed to develop into a method(ology) of engaging both informants and audience in a meaningful dialogue of knowledge production.

By using images to contextualize ethnographic evidence and by making these previous points not only with words, but also through imagery, I aim to convince the reader of the integrity of my ethnographic analyses as well as that theories of visual anthropology are as useful for analysing anthropological subjects as for communicating ourselves.

L'intrusion du silence dans la matière théâtrale où tout est sensé passer par les mots dits sur scène à voix haute constitue d'emblée un élément paradoxal.
Le silence sur scène manifeste le plus souvent une réticence puisqu'il s'agit pour un personnage de retenir sa parole, quelle qu'en soit la raison. Lorsqu’il est volontaire, ce silence peut participer de la rhétorique du blâme. Mais d'autres silences de retenue ne relèvent pas de la rhétorique et semblent plutôt promouvoir le pathos sur le logos, en particulier lorsqu’il s’agit de silences contraints, imposés au corps de l'extérieur, par exemple au moyen d’un bâillon comme pour Iphigénie dans l’Agamemnon d’Eschyle. De tels silences sont décrits et commentés à haute voix par d’autres personnages au cœur de la performance scénique orale. L’absence de parole peut donc être rendue dans la langue tragique qui matérialise paradoxalement le silence sous la forme visuelle de tableaux sonores : le son manifeste, en effet, la présence d'un corps dont il fait connaître la qualité ou l'état, rendus sensibles aussi bien par divers procédés sonores que par des images de pétrification (Niobé) ou de tableaux peints (Iphigénie). Or la corrélation de ces silences sonores avec la souffrance et l'animalité est particulièrement bien illustrée dans le Philoctète de Sophocle où le silence est à proprement parler incarné face à la parole dialogique articulée et bien audible : c'est par le silence sonore de ses cris de souffrance animale que Philoctète parvient à toucher Néoptolème et à lui faire partager son expérience au-delà des mots.
Sur la scène tragique, le silence du pathos, a priori invisible pour les spectateurs, est donc non seulement décrit, mais mis en mots, poïètisé, rendu visible dans la trame sonore du langage tout en matérialisant l'absence de paroles rationnelles. Ce silence poïétique, interactif, qui résonne sur scène, révèle sa capacité à communiquer le pathos non seulement aux personnages intra-scéniques, mais au-delà, à tout l’auditoire rassemblé au théâtre.

Near the end of the text, in a footnote appended as an afterthought to Derrida's treatise on "Heidegger and the Question", the question is addressed of what precedes all questioning as the bringing and belonging together of being and thinking at the moment of their beginning.

This study focuses on Lynne Ramsay's adaptation of Lionel Shriver's epistolary novel We Need to Talk About Kevin and argues that the film should be seen as an example of feminist horror that subverts and challenges cultural mother myths. It considers the impact of feminist psychoanalytic approaches to horror before exploring the emerging genre of feminist horror films and the revised theoretical approaches to horror that the genre demands. The analysis of We Need to Talk About Kevin centres on the film's feminist representation of motherhood. The film's internal landscape and intimate exploration of Eva's fractured, unreliable memories has wider resonance and acknowledges the simple feminist truth that patriarchy would rather sweep under the carpet: mothers do not always bond with their children.

The author has introduced a new disciplinary technology called “Silence Studies” within the ambit of macro-linguistics. The term ‘silenceme’ is coined in analogy with phoneme, morpheme etc.(cf.  http://search.gmane.org/?query=Silenceme&author=Debaprasad+Bandyopadhyay&group=&sort=revdate&DEFAULTOP=and&xP=grand%09petite%09narrative%09bharat&xFILTERS=Abandyopadhyay-Adebaprasad---A, http://linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-2149.html#, http://www.scribd.com/collections/3355082/SILENCEME-THE-SILENT-%E2%80%9COTHER%E2%80%9D-IN-LINGUISTICS-SILENCE-STUDIES)
Instead of writing a technical paper on it, the author  composed a pseudo-novel/fiction (how do we distinguish between fact and fiction?) following feminist type of representation in Bangla:http://www.scribd.com/doc/50661072/META-PETITE-NARRATIVE-OF-BHARA. It was subsequently translated into English at the Silence Digest (John Cage site), VirginiaUniversity: http://search.gmane.org/?query=Grand%2Fpetite+Narrative+of+Bharat&author=Debaprasad+Bandyopadhyay&group=&sort=revdate&DEFAULTOP=and&query=
After that it was translated into Italian, thanks to Stefano Pocci and Diaforia group, Milan, Italy. The Psychology of Silence : English & Italian Translations:http://diaforiasinecondicio.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/diaforia-n%C2%B05-debaprasad-bandyopadhyay/
The same Diaforia group, who took a lengthy academic interview, where the author explained Indian Psycholinguistics and a different type of communication system(s)related to “Corporeal Studies”( another disciplinary technology introduced by the author. cf.http://www.scribd.com/collections/3361033/Corporal-Studies):
Cf. Interview in English: http://diaforiasinecondicio.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/qa-with-debaprasad-bandyopadhyay/
Interview in Italian: http://diaforiasinecondicio.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/intervista-a-debaprasad-bandyopadhyay/
The Psychology of Silence : English & Italian Translations:http://diaforiasinecondicio.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/diaforia-n%C2%B05-debaprasad-bandyopadhyay/
also see: http://www.scribd.com/doc/61227834/The-Psychology-of-Silence-The-Story-of-Bharat
http://isid.academia.edu/DebaprasadBandyopadhyay/Papers/802793/The_Psychology_of_Silence_The_Story_of_Bharat
One might accuse the author that he was deviating from the rigor of strict “scientific” writing. In this case, the author must reiterated the present position of Julia Kristeva, who had influenced the author much to frame my anti-chomskian “Crippled Linguistic Creativity Hypothesis”, which was also subscribed by Chomsky himself(personal correspondence, 1994-95). Cf. http://www.scribd.com/collections/3353492/Crippled-Creativity One may also see : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfqRo7YD10M&context=C3949d1eADOEgsToPDskJnBnZTqRZHiE468sXccjbP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVIn0KPmucU&context=C3949d1eADOEgsToPDskJnBnZTqRZHiE468sXccjbP and Permalink: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.music.john-cage/4230
Colophon: Stefano Pocci,Diaforia; Silent Digest, Virginia Univ

When the Muses and Apollo fall silent for Sidonius, this signifies neither a general silence of poetry in Late Antiquity nor a lasting silence on the poet’s own part. It is paradoxically the “silence of the Muse,” the trope for the poet’s loss of speech, that most clearly displays the gamut of the emotions of the poetic persona. The “inward turn” and psychological approach will be used to show that Sidonius, in discourse with the hanging voices of the Muses, created a series of self-portraits petitioner of Majorian, host to the Burgundians, a human suffering deeply after the murder of Lampridius— that prove instrumental in explaining himself and the world. Using his allegory of the “silent Muse” and the literary technique of allusion, Sidonius evokes a multi-layered world of imagery that enables him to overcome his traumas and make his readers into spectators alert and responsive to the troubles of their epoch.

Le renouveau de théâtres contemporains comme ceux de Marie NDiaye et Bernard-Marie Koltès réside, notamment, dans une mise en oeuvre déclarée et assumée du mensonge. À travers une lecture de Quai Ouest (Koltès) et de Providence (NDiaye), cet article montre comment, dans ces dramaturgies, la fable se déconstruit à travers un partage de voix discordantes, dont aucune n'est en mesure de prendre le pas sur les autres. Cette multiplicité de versions concomitantes, et explicitement mensongères, témoigne de ce que la vérité ne tient pas à un accord préalable, mais ne saurait apparaître, incertaine, que dans la confrontation du mensonge et de sa doublure, le silence. La prolifération du verbe cerne un noyau d'indicible où se logent le désir des personnages et l'impossibilité de tout sentiment rigide d'appartenance idéologique ou identitaire.

Create silence! The epistemology of the word "silence" leads us to the Latin distinction between tacere and silere, whose meanings express both its ambivalence either as absence of speech and as original dimension, the latter completely independent from speech. It seems like that the contemporary western world has lost recollection of the meaning of silere. In the so-called commons perspective, silence seems to fit well within the description of non-exclusive and nonrival good, as well as a potentially unlimited and totally ecological one. This paper proposes an epistemological revolution based on an ecology of silence, not only in relation to a perceptive and concretistic dimension, but also as an existential attitude or state of mind in relation to the symbolic and experiential aspects of our lives. Thus, silence becomes a practice of absence, diametrically opposed to the capitalist concepts of storage / filling / dogma of presence that informs our modus operandi and our mindset.

Uma palavra à imagem do silêncio.-Paul Celan Que o silêncio transpasse toda a obra de Orides Fontela e seja, de certa forma, um de seus fundamentos, não causa espanto, já que isso, no decorrer de toda a modernidade, desde Mallarmé e seu fascínio sobre tal tema, é fato que se repete inúmeras vezes. Basta observar as obras de artistas como Mondrian, Cage, Beckett ou Bergman, para poder dizer que a arte moderna e contemporânea, ao se deter em um território que antes era restrito à esfera filosófica e mística (e aqui podemos pensar desde os pensadores pré-socráticos até a doutrina zen-budista), abriu a possibilidade de cada artista encarar o silêncio de forma pessoal. As obras desenvolvidas a partir do silêncio podem articulá-lo em conceitos específicos, ora encarando-o como negação ora como afirmação do fazer artístico, ou, às vezes, superando essa dicotomia em favor de algo mais amplo, uma reflexão voltada para o próprio pensamento, no qual o silêncio é colocado como uma espécie de guia dentro dos caminhos tortuosos da linguagem. Orides Fontela, apesar de sua insistência em negar a presença do nada em sua obra[1], não pode fugir desse "impasse inevitável", porque aquilo que ela coloca como problema central, o ser, a forma, a palavra, está entrelaçado justamente ao conceito de nada, que desde Mallarmé é visto como realidade inerente tanto à fala poética quanto à esfera ontológica. Nesse sentido, se o nada não é evocado diretamente em seus poemas, ele surge a partir de suas preocupações com a palavra e o ser, sendo que a forma (uma das palavras mais presentes em seus poemas) se torna um sinônimo para o estético e o existencial. Antes de cairmos no erro de identificar o silêncio, o nada, como um suposto pessimismo da linguagem, para a poeta ele se torna um problema do qual não consegue escapar, pois acaba levando para seus poemas o fascínio pela filosofia. Ora, sem perceber a contradição de seu discurso, ela acaba afirmando aquilo que nega, "o nada pensado como o próprio ser"[2], pois não há como não pensar na existência, através da filosofia, sem que sejam traçadas reflexões sobre o nada. Assim, para a poeta, a palavra cumpre sua existência a partir do silêncio que lhe define os limites, no qual a insuficiência é sua própria matéria e a morte torna-se desejo de impessoalidade, fuga da consciência, ato de desumanização, conforme podemos ler em um poema pertencente ao livro Transposição:

The novel presents a variety of writings of silence; but we limit ourselves, in the context of the present work, to the most relevant aspects, namely interruptions in narratives, narrative ellipses and point of suspension as the particular language of silence. These three modalities nevertheless serve a prolix discourse, and are innovate. Suddenly the novel exemplifies what contemporary literature calls the anti-novel.

This paper explores the spiritual geography of the Upper Kolyma region, Sakha Republic (Yakutia), Russia through the songs of shamans and others recorded in the field by the author at the turn of the 21st century. The historic near-extinction of the Yukaghir, demographically one of the smallest of the “Small Peoples of the North,” contrasts with their adaptation and perseverance through the Soviet era. The role of the Yukaghir shaman suggests a spiritual parallel to the secular authority of the state. The masters of the earth—local animal and nature spirits—perform surveillance and act as informants, telling the shaman about the people and their activities while acting as guardians and enforcers. Shamans communicate with their spirits by means of sounds, musically mediating between the worlds of nature and supernature. But the source of the Yukaghir shaman's power is ecological, residing in sacred elements of the environment beyond the reach of bureaucrats and apparatchiks. Like the people themselves, the spirits belong to the land and are thus inalienable.
    In their magical otherness, shamans acted as historical conduits for resistance and provided a secret counternarrative to Soviet domination. The militant wave of atheism following collectivization brought public ceremonies to a halt. Despite the fierce anti-shaman repression campaigns, well-known Sakha (Yakut) singers preserved sacred vocal knowledge in the north by performing and recording as secular folk artists. Shamans' songs were also presenced in outbreaks of involuntary singing diseases which periodically swept through the native settlements, triggered in part by the imposing presence of Russian authorities. The psychopathology and behaviors of these echolalic nervous afflictions are documented in rare eyewitness accounts by a Soviet doctor in Kolyma during the 1920s, and in contemporary oral testimony from the author's field research. Soviet medical policies focused on collectivization and re-education as therapeutic tools to cure the singing diseases linked in native consciousness to ancestor spirits haunting and inhabiting the landscape.
    In the acoustemology of place, certain forest zones thick with trees are known as deep or "deaf" taiga. Sounds are muted in such densely wooded areas; their deathly silence is a source of fear in the popular imaginary. Because of their remoteness, they became sites of prisons and death camps in the Stalinist gulag. Songs rooted in historic Russian melodies tell of doomed souls and the return of the dead encountered in these far-off places. In later Yukaghir songs the stark landscape serves as a metaphor of love and loss, geopoetically marking the spatial and temporal distance between souls through lyrical images of distance and longing. The members of what Nikolai Vakhtin has called the "rupture generation" suffered the erasures of tradition and identity, undergoing the displacements of collectivization, purges, famine, and war. Through these deeply personal songs resonating with the collective memory of deprivation and persecution, the narratives of their experiences survived the Soviet epoch. At once autobiographical and rooted in folkloric motifs, they incorporate distinct influences from Russian, Sakha (Yakut), Tunguso-Manchurian, and ancient Kolymian tales and melodies in a fluid style unique to the region. The presentation includes excerpts and analysis of melodies and texts, recorded in the field by the author, showing how spiritual power was encoded in music to modulate secular Soviet authority.

In Aeschylean theatre, the silence reflects the feelings of characters: anger, sadness, pain are often represented through non-verbal communication. Niobe, as a mater dolorosa, is the best example of an Aeschylean silent character: secluded in her mourning, she decides not to speak and refuses to communicate with the other characters; in this way she lives in her solitude, while she sits on her children's grave for three days. The fr. 154a Radt testifies this position on the stage and validates the information we were given by Ar. Ra. 911-913; T 1.20 Radt; Σ [BCDMNPPdVWXY] ad A. Pr. 436a; Σ [B*NcP*SjWXcYa] ad A. Pr. 437a. del discorso 1.

This theme has already been well explored. Cf. references in p. 157, n.8 in Thomas Buchan's "Paradise as the Landscape of Salvation in Ephrem the Syrian", in Michael Christensen and Jeffery Wittung (eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature. The History and the Development of Deification in Christian Traditions, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), pp. 147-159. My introduction above paraphrases Buchan's. 8 Buchan, "Paradise" p. 157, n.12. 9 Ezekiel 28:13-14: "Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire,

Exploring Sicilian secular confessions, this essay discusses anthropological impasses on talk and silence. Such dilemmas reveal ethnographic frailties in engaging with concealment and revealing. The delicacy of negotiating between those demanding silence (the mafia) and those demanding self-revelation (the antimafia activists) unsettles the fieldwork ethics of our own anthropological entanglement in the gray areas of fieldwork between silence and talk. I show that pentiti (mafia confessants) blur the area between mafia and antimafia, allowing people to navigate across institutional categories. What is more, the essay embeds Sicilian confession in an intellectual genealogy, comparing mafia confession with its Christian counterpart and with bureaucratic theodicy. The move of confessional material of mafiosi and ordinary Sicilians from a private exchange to the public sphere recalls comparisons with religious ritual. While acknowledging the effects of confession on the mafia person, akin to the religious experience as a path to change and a new self, the essay suggests that secular confession should be approached through the lens of its effects on the lives of others. Its secularism is not imbued in an institution as much as it is invested in the life trajectories it inspires, often in the face of punishment.

Si l’on tendait jusqu’alors à opposer, presque mécaniquement, dans l’œuvre
rimbaldienne la Saison et Les Illuminations, les critiques les plus récentes
ont démontré qu’au-delà d’un questionnement sur la postériorité ou
l’antériorité respectives des recueils, les deux textes se devraient plutôt
d’être considérés simultanément. S’ouvre dès lors cette possibilité de tisser
des liens entre ces deux recueils, non dans leur thématique mais dans une
approche scripturale, presque une tactique d’écriture qui dans les deux
œuvres se font écho avec une surprenante complémentarité.
Si la Saison se voulait l’œuvre en pointillé, celle où le non-dit oralisé est
rendu visible par des points de suspension et une parole continuellement
interrompue par un narrateur tourmenté ; les Illuminations, en revanche, se

veulent de l’esthétique du blanc, elles s’inscrivent comme textes où ce non-
dit prévaut sur l’inscrit et l’écrit, où il est demandé au lecteur de guetter et

de deviner ce silence porteur de sens.
C’est ce rapport de force, cette tension, entre un poète, n’ayant jamais
réellement délaissé son œuvre, et un lecteur ne devenant jamais
véritablement dépositaire de l’œuvre, que nous avons nommé dans notre
thèse « tactique du vide ». Il s’agit de ne plus échapper à cette sensation
d’incompréhension mais de l’embrasser, ainsi que ce malaise, en tant
qu’élément quintessensciel à toute approche critique mais également
humaine de l’œuvre.