Silence as relation in music

Critical international relations (IR) theories understand silence as a political phenomenon that aims at controlling people. Those who cannot speak are considered dominated (Hansen 2000). This conception echoes political theories that solely see silence as violence, understood as the ‘absence of sound, prohibition on speech, refusal to communicate’ that is ‘too easily equated with the passive, the submissive and the void’ (Losseff and Doctor 2007, p.1).Several analyses take distance from such perspectives by showing the plasticity of silence in the political arena (Barbet and Honoré 2013). ¹ This chapter challenges these approaches and goes beyond the idea of plasticity. It assumes that silence ‘is not a substance but a relation’ (Le Breton 1997, p. 80). As a form of communication (Hendry and Watson 2001) or ‘indirect communication’ (Wilden 1987, p.124), silence does not automatically entail subordination or repression. ² Indeed, it is worth noting that some practices of silence are a source of resistance to oppression, deepening spirituality or strengthening power. If silence is a relation, then the analyst must specify the circumstances in which it appears. For Le Breton, ‘only the context gives the meaning, because the silence in itself means nothing’ (Le Breton 1997, p. 21).