Silence and a World-Otherwise: An Investigation of Silence as Politically Enabling

Abstract

This thesis aims to break down and unwork the reductionist seemingly mutual exclusivity between silence and speech that is prevalent in political discourses influenced by the liberal-democratic tradition. This constructed binary, in which speech is regarded as the liberating route to universal freedom, and silence is equated with invisibility, powerlessness and absence, influences the daily lived experiences of individuals embedded in these political systems. I propose a focus on the relationship between silence and speech by taking into account the entanglements between silence, speech, violence, and power. Departing from existing scholarship by most notably Sylvia Wynter, Nikita Dhawan, and Wendy Brown, this thesis is an endeavor to politicize silence, to explore how some sorts of speech and silence have been made possible and impossible by and for certain human beings, and, in turn, how this influences the relationship between silence and speech. This opens up space for a recognition that the lack of the spoken word does not inherently mean invisibility or powerlessness. Focusing on the forms of agential refusal inside these silences as deployed by liminal categories in a system created by the overrepresentation of Man, this thesis rethinks and challenges foundational approaches to the ways in which the liberal-democratic tradition regards the relationship between silence and speech. Working towards such a politicization of silence, this thesis asks the following question: How can the inherently violent and exclusionary seemingly mutual exclusivity between silence and speech, as constructed for and by Sylvia Wynter’s ‘overrepresentation of Man2’ rooted in the liberal-democratic tradition, be opened up by Wynter’s ‘liminal categories’ towards an understanding of silence as politically enabling, creating a world-otherwise? This thesis thus provides a recognition that not everything that is not spoken, remains hidden – that not everyone needs to speak in order to exist.