The Faces of Silence

What can we say when silent? In John Cage's 4'33", a pianist sits at his piano in silence for four and a half minutes, and after his performance the audience applauds enthusiastically, as they would had he played. In Marina Abramovic's The Artist is Present, the artist sat before her spectator in complete silence for a period of time of the spectator's choosing. In many cases the audience members were moved to tears, though nothing was said. We could seemingly categorize these examples as the absence of a performance, but the exchange of silence had a profound impact on the audience members.

John Cage has said that, “everything we do is music”. There are many murmurs and buzzings that carry us through our everyday environment. Being can be heard all around, yet silence reigns. We are silent more than we are vocal in our everyday dealings, and whether actively or passively—engaged or distracted—we listen and absorb. It seems there can be no pure silence in the world, though silence simultaneously pervades all that we experience. If there is always a rustle or a hum lurking in the background, is it really possible to consider silence existentially as an absence of sound? Levinas wrote that the invisible does not indicate an absence, but rather that "elle implique des rapports avec ce qui n'est pas donné" (TI 22). Extending this idea beyond the invisible, this paper will examine the phenomenon of silence by using the following question as a point of departure: Given that speech is often proposed as a distinguishing feature of humanity, how does the presence of silence within communication affect our understanding of being?

            In considering this question, this paper will seek to explore the concept of silence as a form of communication through an analysis of Levinas’ conception of the metaphysical structure of language. Silence is pervasive in all discourse and serves as a ground through which language and meaning are made possible. In this way, silence will be revealed as the presence of the Other in language, in connection with the saying that conditions the said, in which the saying appears. The analysis of silence will expand the conception of language in order to question an understanding of language as the transmission of reason. Though it is discourse that articulates meaning, silence is not devoid of significance. Experiences of silence can help us to become more attuned to the with of the world, as if silence is constitutional for meaning in communication with others. This idea is conveyed in a poem by Langston Hughes:

Silence

I catch the pattern

Of your silence

Before you speak

I do not need

To hear a word

In your silence

Every tone I seek

Is heard.

This poem exemplifies the way that we may come to understand our own being and that of others through silent communication, and that communication and understanding are not limited to explicitly laid out language. Yet it generally appears counterintuitive to ‘say’ anything when we are silent, and perhaps the seemingly contradictory nature of this idea has contributed to the general silence about silence. Within the tradition of philosophy, the capacity for speech has long been considered as a defining characteristic of humanity, and thus the literature on silence is sparse in comparison to that of verbal and written expression through language.

In rendering agreement and generalization possible, the capacity for speech provides the possibility for contemplation about truth, reason, and justice: it offers a space in which community may arise. In The Politics, Aristotle argues that: 

"Among living beings, only man has language. The voice is the sign of pain and pleasure, and this is why it belongs to other living beings (since their nature has developed to the point of having the sensations of pain and pleasure and of signifying the two). But language is for manifesting the fitting and unfitting and the just and the unjust. To have the sensation of the good and the bad and of the just and the unjust is what is proper to men as opposed to other living beings, and the community of these things makes dwelling and the city."

(1253a, 10-18)

Although Aristotle does not explicitly state this point of view, his definition seems to suggest that having these complex sensations, beyond pleasure and pain, is equiprimordial with the capacity for language. It is through the manifestation of these complex sensations that community is possible. The capacity for contemplation in language and the sensations that it manifests are inextricably linked with the concept of the animale rationale that designates man as the animal not only with speech, but with reason. Levinas cautions, however, against too closely equivocating language and reason, insofar as this can lead to a tendency to treat language as subservient to the pursuit of absolute knowledge. The danger of this tendency lies in the simultaneous tendency to overlook the importance of the Other in establishing meaning and the subjective experience of language. To overlook the presence of the Other is to overlook the ethical foundation of language, which leads to the effacing of the living subject. As Levinas cautions, “truth is taken to result from the effacing of the living man behind the mathematical structures that think themselves out in him, rather than he be thinking them” (OB 58). To efface the living subject in this way is to efface subjectivity, ethical responsibility, and, ultimately, the meaning of existence that is to exist for the Other.

In order to re-establish the primacy of subjectivity over that of objectivity, this paper will examine the presence silence within the structure of language and how silence signifies beyond its definition as an absence of sound. Though it appears contradictory to express that there is a presence of a negation, silence should not be characterized as an absence. Rather, as it pervades all aspects of language, silence signifies that which is not manifest. There is something silent always lurking in discourse, which resists being reduced to the confines of the said. What is in the said always leaves something unsaid, because the saying resists totality. The ethical nature of being is constituted by an altérité radicale that is ever-present within the subject, which is reflected in the relationship between silence and language. This radical alterity—or the radical separation within the Same brought about by the presence of the Other—can never be fully unveiled or disclosed at the service of reason and, as such, resists ever being completed dominated. In its silence, the Other can resist totality, as its response will always exist as something imprévisible to the Same.

The foundational presence of silence in the structure of language reveals the primordial way that the presence of the Other establishes meaning, language, and truth. Though Levinas conceives of language as the manifestation of truth and the basis for common understanding of a shared experience or thought, the face of the Other calls beyond what is given through words—it imposes a face to face responsibility that, in its immediacy, is beyond and prior to words. In this way, the constitutive ethical relation of the one-for-the-other exists in the realm of the unsayable. It is within the realm beyond words that the power of the Other abides and where the ethical responsibility to the Other finds its origins, which then shapes the way that language gets employed in the moral, political spheres. Through the analysis of the relationship between silence and the Other, the intersubjective and ethical implications of silence in the social, political sphere will be explored. I argue that while silence is primarily fundamental in the structure of language, there are also modes of silence that are fundamentally different, and these modes impact our understanding and experience of communication dramatically. I contend that there are two major modes of silence—those of résistance éthique and subversive silence, which belong to the saying and the said respectively, and, as such, are intertwined with one another. In this way, silence will be revealed to have both salutary and destructive aspects. Yet the overarching significance of silence remains fundamental within the structure of language, as silence exposes the transcendence of the Other that will always resist totality.