Thinking about silence

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511676178.002

1 - Thinking about silence

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2010

Edited by

Ruth Ginio and

Efrat Ben-Ze’ev: Affiliation:
Ruppin Academic Centre, Israel
Ruth Ginio: Affiliation:
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Jay Winter: Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Les souvenirs sont façonnés par l'oubli comme les contours du rivage sur la mer.

Memory is framed by forgetting in the same way as the contours of the shoreline are framed by the sea.

Marc Augé

To be silent is still to speak.

Maurice Blanchot

Below the surface

Marc Augé's elegant formulation of the embrace of memory and forgetting draws upon a long tradition of philosophical and literary reflection. It is time, though, to go beyond it, in the effort to transcend the now saturated field of memory studies dominated by scholarship which adopts this binary approach. For the topographical metaphor employed here is clearly incomplete. We need to see the landscape of the shoreline in all three dimensions. Doing so enables us to observe a vertical dimension to the creation and erosion of the shoreline which is dynamic, unstable, and at times, intrusive. We speak of those deposits below the surface of the water which emerge with the tides or with other environmental changes. In the framework of how we think about memory and forgetting, these hidden shapes cannot simply be ignored because they are concealed at some moments and revealed at others. They must be examined as part of the cartography of recollection and remembrance.

Silences: liturgical, political, essentialist

We call these hidden deposits silence. The composer John Cage said all that needs to be said about the performative nature of silence.

Type: Chapter
Information: Shadows of War
A Social History of Silence in the Twentieth Century
, pp. 3 - 31

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511676178.002 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Marc, Augé, Les formes de l'oubli (Paris: Payot & Rivages, 1998), p. 4.Google Scholar

Maurice, Blanchot, The writing of the disaster, trans. Anne, Smock (Lincoln, Neb. and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), p. 11Google Scholar

Branden, W. Joseph, ‘John Cage and the architecture of silence’, October, LXXXI (Summer, 1997), pp. 80–104.Google Scholar

Primo, Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (New York: Basic Books, 2002), p. 90.Google Scholar

Shoshana, Felman, ‘Paul de Man's silence’, Critical Inquiry, XV1, 4 (Summer 1989), pp. 704–44.Google Scholar

Thompson, E. P, The making of the English working class (London: Victor Gollancz, 1963), p. 18.Google Scholar

Joan, W. Scott, ‘The evidence of experience’, Critical Inquiry, XVII, 4 (1991), pp. 773–97.Google Scholar

Daniel, Schacter, The seven sins of memory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 20–3Google Scholar

Elizabeth, Loftus, Eyewitness testimony (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1979)Google Scholar

Veronica, Nourkova, Daniel, M. Bernstein and Elizabeth, Loftus, ‘Biography becomes autobiography: Distorting the subjective past’, American Journal of Psychology, CXVII, 1 (2004), pp. 65–80.Google Scholar

Jay, Winter, Remembering war: The Great War between history and memory in the twentieth century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), ch. 1.Google Scholar

Paul, Ricoeur, La mémoire, l'histoire, l'oubli (Paris: Seuil, 2000), p. xi.Google Scholar

Nancy, Wood, Vectors of memory: Legacies of trauma in postwar Europe (Oxford: Berg, 1999)Google Scholar

Aleida, Assmann, Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999).Google Scholar

Andreas, Huyssen, Twilight memories: marking time in a culture of amnesia (New York: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar

Lawrence, Langer, Holocaust and the literary imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975)Google Scholar

James, E. Young, At memory's edge: After-images of the Holocaust in contemporary art and architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

Samuel, Hynes, The soldiers' tale (New York: Penguin, 2000).Google Scholar

Jay, Winter and Emmanuel, Sivan (eds.), War and remembrance in the twentieth century (Cambridge University Press, 1999), ch. 1.Google Scholar

Philippe, Forest (ed.), Qu'est-ce qu'une nation? (Paris: Pierre Bordas et fils éditeur, 1991).

Benedict, Anderson, Imagined communities (London: Verso, 1983).Google Scholar

Charles, Maier, ‘Consigning the twentieth century to history: Alternative narratives for the modern era’, American Historical Review, CV, 3 (2000), pp. 807–31.Google Scholar

Paul, Calloway, Soviet and Western psychiatry (London: Moor Press, 1992).Google Scholar

Francisco, Fernandez, ‘The return of Civil War ghosts. The ethnography of exhumations in contemporary Spain’, Anthropology Today, XXII, 3 (2006), pp. 7–12.Google Scholar

Piers, Vitebsky, ‘Loving and forgetting: Moments of inarticulacy in tribal India’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, XIV, 2 (2008), pp. 243–61.Google Scholar

Inga, Clendinnen, Ambivalent conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517–1570 (Cambridge University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

Dolores, Hayden, The power of place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).Google Scholar

Orhan, Pamuk, Snow, trans. Maureen, Freely (New York: Knopf, 2004).Google Scholar

Efrat, Ben-Ze'ev, ‘The politics of taste and smell: Palestinian rites of return’, in Marianne, Lien and Brigitte, Nerlich (eds.), The politics of food (Oxford: Berg, 2004).Google Scholar

Simon, Schama, Landscape and memory (New York: Knopf, 1995).Google Scholar

Svetlana, Boym, The future of nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2002).Google Scholar

Keith, Basso, ‘“To give up on words:” Silence in Western Apache culture’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, XXVI, 3 (1970), pp. 215–30.Google Scholar

Pieter, Lagrou, The legacy of Nazi occupation: Patriotic memory and national recovery in Western Europe, 1945–1965 (Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar

Henry, Rousso, The Vichy syndrome: History and memory in France since 1944, trans. Arthur, Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 10.Google Scholar

Benjamin, Stora, La gangrène et l'oubli: La mémoire de la guerre d'Algérie (Paris: La Découverte, 1991), pp. 261–5.Google Scholar

Henry, Reynolds, The other side of the frontier: Aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1998).Google Scholar

Orlando, Figes, Whisperers: Private life in Stalin's Russia (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007).Google Scholar

John, F. Sweets, ‘Hold that pendulum! Redefining Fascism, collaborationism and resistance in France’, French Historical Studies, XV, 4 (1988), p. 745.Google Scholar

Stef, Scagliola, ‘The silences and myths of a “dirty war”: Coming to terms with the Dutch-Indonesian decolonization war (1945–1949)’, European Review of History, XIV, 2 (2007), pp. 249–51.Google Scholar

Michael, A. Schmidtke, ‘Cultural revolution or culture shock? Student radicalism and 1968 in Germany’, South Central Review, XVI, 4 (2000), pp. 77–89.Google Scholar

Slavery and justice (Providence, RI: Brown University, 2004).

Jay, Winter, ‘The performance of the past: Memory, history, identity’, in Karin, Tilmans, Frank, Vree and Jay, Winter (eds.), Performing the past (University of Chicago Press, 2010), ch. 1.Google Scholar

Charles, S. Maier, ‘A surfeit of memory? Reflections on history, melancholy and denial’, History and memory, V, 2 (1993), pp. 136–51Google Scholar

Aleksandr, I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 69ff.Google Scholar

Robin, Kemball, ‘Anna Akhmatova's “Requiem, 1935–1940”’, Russian Review, XXXIII (1974), pp. 303–12Google Scholar

Book contents

1 - Thinking about silence

Summary

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive