Silence: An Absent Presence?

For the most part, scholarly literature illustrates silence as a state that is predominantly characterized by an absence.[1] The defining features most frequently attributed to silence are absence of sound[2] and speechlessness.[3] It is not only this notion of ‘absence’ that provokes the negativity which is regularly attributed to silence; such negativity is also to do with how silence is associated with a breaking of communication[4] or with communication of disturbing affective states such as fear or repressed anger.[5]

And yet, in my own (clinical and research) work in Sri Lanka with persons of different age, gender, religious and ethnic groups, I found silence to be one of the most powerful and constructive ways of communicating. The people I worked with exposed me to an immensely creative space that silence bestows them with, enabling them to connect with each other in profoundly deep and meaningful ways. In some of the most challenging circumstances of their lives, such as war and terror, silence proved to be not only powerful, but also the only possible means of staying in contact, and staying alive. In fact, they showed me that silence was anything but an absence.

I first met Ananda in 2007; he came to a mobile clinic conducted by a local non-governmental organization (referred to as NGO henceforth) that worked with conflict affected communities. I worked for this NGO at the time as a clinical supervisor and a trainer. Throughout the 19 months that I worked with Ananda, conversation felt like a slow and dragging war. Our sessions were filled with long silences. Whenever he chose to verbally respond to me, his answers were short and well-guarded. It did not take long for me to realize that he was not keen to talk with me. Still, he continued to visit me, regularly; for what? After many weeks of meeting him, I disclosed how I felt about our work; I asked him if he would like to seek out another professional and offered him my help to find one. He waited in silence for some time, and asked: “Why do you ask me questions? Why should I ‘tell’ you? Can you not see?”

Shanthi is a survivor of the war and a widow from a small, rural community situated at the border of the Northern and North-Central provinces of Sri Lanka; this village was one of the field sites of my PhD research work. In one of our meetings, Shanthi disclosed the stories of her mother, father and husband, all of whom were dead. Her story, however, was not only about factual details; the story was shadowed with a pervasive sense of confusion, deep lament, anger and many more sentiments. Throughout the disclosure, Shanthi was crying; or was she? It seemed as if the tears fell down on their own, with minimal to no ‘intentional’ effort on Shanthi’s part. Years had gone by since her losses, and yet, the embodied grief could still provoke streams of tears. At the time of their deaths, Shanthi could not afford to cry aloud; thus, she lamented in silence. With me, she continued her silent crying. Sitting with her, I could feel the heaviness of her tears, the memories, the losses. It felt like a hugely risky business for me to even suggest analysing those tears, giving words to them, naming their components. Instead, silence felt like the best way to relate to them, to the heavy affect that was loaded in them.

My encounters and experiences with silence and its power was not limited to direct recipients of the violence of war. I have worked with many professionals, including doctors, psychologists and researchers, who maintained a sickening silence in the face of injustices. They had their own reasons for it, and the reasons were multiple and varied. I have seen how the press and media not only maintained a silence, but even propelled and promoted it through propaganda and misinformation. The power of silence is evident during peace times too. For instance, while maintaining an official silence about war and its violence soon after the end of a war can be detrimental in some ways, it still has vital importance for maintaining the fragile peace achieved. The silence extends even to the non-human, objective world. I have visited grave yards, and specially places where massacres and atrocities against humanity have been committed. Not only were these physical spaces silent; I could not find a better way to relate to them, if not for silence.

Deborah Tannen[6] indicates that silence is, contrary to the conventional belief, anything but nothing. I agree; silence is complex, constructive and powerful. In most cases, silence has power even if it is forced and oppressive. It is one of the most vigorous ways of relating to affect and its complexities, of conveying messages loaded with multi-faceted affect, and facilitating difficult conversations between strangers and friends. Silent affect is oriented towards two dimensions; it merges the boundary between not only the person and the (silencing) world outside; it also merges the boundary between the subject and the other that is inside her subjectivity. Shanthi brings out this dual message that silence entails. It may stem from fear and vulnerability, or from deep care for another and guilt; despite what provokes silence, or what it contains, it is about an alternative way of living: one that aids to make and break intricate moments of living, disturbing and/or propelling affect. In other words, silent presence is as powerful as, if not more powerful than, vocal presence.

“Containing everything in itself, silence is meaningful, even if it is invisible. It can mean powerlessness or emptiness – but not always. Because it fills out the space in which it appears, it can be equated with a kind of emptiness, but that is not the same as absence…

Like the zero in mathematics, silence is an absence with a function, and a rhetorical one at that.”[7]