Silences as Resistance in Public Narratives (NeMLA)
Newport, RI
Organization: NeMLA
Event: NeMLA
Silences as Resistance in Public Narratives
Silence is generally seen as something to surmount: we break silence; we give voice to silenced stories; we speak out against injustice. But silence can be a powerful mode of expression in its own right. There is a history of silent protest. Silence can reject dominant expectations or refuse to offer up a story for voyeurism, appropriation, or commodification. It can push reader-listeners to listen for something wordless, to play an active role in striving to understand, and simultaneously to recognize the limits of their ability to understand another person’s trauma. Silence is rarely ever singular.
This seminar, building on successful past seminars about the roles and limits of narrative silences, examines how silences function as forms of resistance to injustice and trauma. It asks: how can we use silences (as creators or as audiences) to create new spaces–spaces of care, of resistance, of justice? How do we listen to what silences have to say–in fictions, testimony, activism, artistic forms of witness, our classrooms and institutions? How can audiences attend to silence in ways that promote structural change?
Participants may choose to address some of the following questions:
- How do the forms of silence change between public narratives (e.g. testimony or activism) and works of art and literature?
- How can we theorize silence as a narrative framework?
- How do we hold the tension between listening to silence, on one hand, and the necessity of speaking out against injustice, on the other?
- How do historical and geographical contexts change the types or effects of silences that strive to oppose injustice?
- How can we keep from homogenizing silences and attend to them in their specificity and situatedness?
Papers on all genres, media, geographical contexts, and languages welcome. Please submit 200-word abstract and bio through the NeMLA portal to Kelly Minerva and Lisa Propst.
Lisa Propst