ABSTRACT
In 2018, numerous political silences loudly vie for our attention and response. From Emma Gonzáles’s three minutes of silence as part of her address at the March for Our Lives to Trump’s attempts to silence the investigation into his campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia, along with the continuing revelations articulated by silence-breakers of sexual harassment strewn throughout, there are indeed multiple meanings and functions of political silence – all of which intersect at the nexus of power and agency. Nevertheless, when silences are analysed in the fields of political science and international relations, they are usually rendered synonymous with notions of defeat, lack, absence, or even as the end of politics, power, and agency. While silences indeed unfold via violent enforcement and domination, this volume demonstrates that political silences cannot be reduced to a single meaning, function, or effect. Rather, this collection seeks to remedy intellectual tendencies to reduce silence to violence, oppression, and absence so as to illuminate how the taken-for-granted and the most seemingly insignificant of silences enable, open, and mobilise power and agency.
