Hi Diane, I don't have the whole poem to hand, but for those interested its
in her Dream of a Common Language (Norton, 1977), and the poem is called
"Cartographies of Silence."
I think the idea of silence(ing) as active is very important -- making what
you are or what you think or do unspeakable IS an active process. Often
(as we have discussed here) the silencing activity itself is made invisible
when it intercalates with the taken-for-granted, the central silent power.
One place I have sometimes experienced it is in dismissal of qualitative
research by fundamentalist quantifiers -- "oh, that's just
impressionistic." "Oh, you're doing micro-sociology." "But what about the
big picture?"
Absence is like a current running below this. I am absent from mainstream
sociology journals because I no longer bother sending my stuff to them
(Michael Burowoy recently resigned from a major sociology journal as a
protest of the silencing of qualitative research, among other
things). Absence I think can come prior to or after silencing.
Institutional absences and silences are heterochronous, too.
thanks, Diane, L*
>leigh - i really rather loved your reminding us/me of adrienne rich - i
>wonder if
>you could elaborate on the notion of "silence, not absence..." in terms of
>
>how the difference is perceived/enacted and what kinds of
>responses are inspired in silence-not-absence?
>thanks
>diane
>
>
>
> ' 'We have destroyed something by our presence,' said Bernard, 'a
>world perhaps.'
> (Virginia Woolf, "The Waves")
>
>+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
>diane celia hodges
>university of british columbia, vancouver / university of colorado, denver
>
>Diane_Hodges@ceo.cudenver.edu
_______________________________________________
Susan Leigh Star, Professor
Department of Communication
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0503
phone 858/534-6327
fax 858/534-7315 email: lstar@ucsd.edu
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~lstar/
"Quantify suffering, you could rule the world." -- Adrienne Rich
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