Is it possible, is that the possible thing at last, the extinction of this black nothing and its impossible shades, the end of the farce of making and the silencing of silence, it wonders, that voice which is silence, or it's me, there's no telling, it's all the same dream, the same silence, it and me, it and him, him and me, and all our train, and all theirs, and all theirs, but whose, whose dream, whose silence, old questions, last questions, ours who are dream and silence, but it's ended, we're ended who never were, soon there will be nothing where there was never anything, last images.

Before beginning our discussion of the materiality of silence, it may prove beneficial at the outset to question what exactly is meant by “the material,” and how such an inquiry may affect our particular exploration at hand.  As such, while I would be more than a little intimidated as to attempt an exhaustive study of such a topic, it should be made evident that this paper will subsequently attempt to operate under the guidelines of a very specific interpretation of the material: namely, the concept of materiality as that which is able to be perceived.  Initially, when one considers the material, certain definitive characteristics come to mind: the tangible and the corporeal, the physical and the real.  And yet the limitations of operating under such a definition are quickly exposed the moment one considers the auditory; while visuality is held within the boundaries of stasis and self-possession, a solid, unchangeable object, the phenomenon of sound is characterized by movement, that which remains in flux, something inherently unstable.  This dynamic and elusive nature, however, does not imply that sound is an intangible entity.  Thus, it is at this juncture that we may find ourselves searching for a broader definition of the material, one which may allow for such an evasive sensorial phenomenon.  More than physical even, the material may be understood as the perceptible, or that which allows itself to be experienced.

Turning our attention then to our main objective—the materiality of silence—it may be argued that its most prominent physical characteristic would be an absence of sound.  At the same time, however, it would be reductive to simply dismiss silence as a negation or a blank space; quite the contrary, silence has an almost substantive quality to it.  This conjecture can be illustrated most clearly by any silent moment, an event wherein the stillness produced will inevitably attract one’s attention more so even than one full of noise and distraction.  Upon the evocation of silence, something palpable appears in the room, it is experiential materiality in its highest form.  It is an absence, in a sense, to which you are drawn, or to invoke Baudrillard: “Only the subject desires, only the object seduces.” (111) Indeed, through this unique instantiation of sensorial deprivation, a sort of minimalist excess emerges by which the auditory void is heard everywhere until nothingness is transformed into physical presence.  Hence, because we are able to perceive silence as a singular phenomenon which elicits a distinct reaction, it may be argued that it possesses a unique materiality and not merely a negation of the audible, but something a bit more extraordinary.

Having thus established the irrefutability of this materiality of silence, another question now arises: through such reasoning, can the inaudible be considered an object?  In short, I would answer no.  Typically, an object exists as a sovereign entity, meaning the object exists without a subject and without question to its autonomy.  In the case of silence, however, there is a need for a mediation through subjectivity—as an auditory absence, it needs auditory perception in order for it to take “form.”  In other words, the subject’s perception is the prism through which silence manifests.  In this sense, the activation by the listener is almost a pre-condition for the materiality of silence, so dependent is it on its experiential invocations.  To this end, while heightening this dynamic, inter-subjective aspect, the inaudible sacrifices a degree of its autonomy, almost fully surrendering itself to whatever observers may be present.  Instead, it is through subjectivity that silence is able to transform from absence to presence, concretizing itself through the continuum of perception.  Operating under the auspices that an object may assert its own existence without the participation of any sort of subject-figure or even separate object (as it may be interpreted), the silent moment assumes the precarious position of a material non-object. 

At this point, while thinking of silence as possessing a specific materiality, I would like to investigate a little more closely the presencing/absencing aspect which so defines silence and how it might compare to the relationship between the material and the immaterial.  Certainly, the sort of mutable dialectic of presence and absence of silence is a rather ambiguous one, at once upholding and simultaneously unraveling its stillness and movement, its excess and minimalism.  It is at once a material absence in that it is perceived as auditory nothingness, but it bears an immaterial presence upon recognition.  Similarly, we see this same paradoxical/reciprocal relationship between absence and presence in silence that we do with the material and the immaterial.[1]

More specifically, most objects have a largely complicated if not completely indecipherable relationship as to where the material object ends and the immaterial affect begins.  Let us step back then, for a moment, to apply this proposition to a very banal, concrete object, as an example: a green umbrella.  On one level, I chose this umbrella because it possesses the material quality of being green, a color that affects me for reasons I may or may not understand, and this pleasurable color experience therefore bestows the umbrella with a certain agency over me.  At the same time, however, the question remains as to whether it is really the material “greenness” of the umbrella which is potent, or my immaterial subjectivity which for some reason (this lack of understanding perhaps fulfilling the role of absence) prefers the timbre of green.  Here again it is difficult to separate the material from the immaterial, the perceived from the actual.  By highlighting this fundamental query of material culture then, we might see that the precarious inter-subjectivity so essential to silence is only a more transparent example of an extremely common phenomenon found throughout such fields of thought.

Having thus explored the specifics of a material silence which operates as an autonomous entity, let us now shift our focus to investigate silence as a more ubiquitous, interdependent phenomenon infused throughout the world of objects.  In fact, it may be argued that the literal silence of the object is one of its most distinctive characteristics.  Most objects, so to speak, are mute, or at the very least, they operate through a language we cannot comprehend; we attempt to understand it by historicizing and contextualizing it, but in the end thing exists without the ability to speak (or without the ability to be understood by the human world).  Thus, we may view silence as almost a pre-condition of the objective world leading to the incommunicability of things.        

As such, we do not need to understand this silence as an inherently negative phenomenon, but rather as one which grants the object an almost heightened autonomy in its unknowability.  To explain further, just as larger systems of knowledge can appear as restrictions against the sovereignty of the thing, projecting ideologies onto objects until they are simply made to adhere to a systematized totality, so too can language and meaning act as impositions.  Indeed, understanding the positive implications of the loss of language as it relates to the silence of the object is imperative to conceiving of the agency of the object.  In this way, the thing’s verbal stillness is not a handicap, a lacking, but an indication that something perhaps beyond language is at work.  As such, one can understand silence as pre-discursive, or as the dissolution of language…where words fail but the affect remains, a something else remains. 

To look for some theoretical guidance, in The Writing of the Disaster Blanchot advocates a journey to “the edge of language,” where silence is appointed the ultimate destination of the poetic endeavor[2].  Similarly, Deleuze discusses “the outside of language” in his essay “He Stuttered” as the moment of rhetorical exhaustion in the face of poetic[3].  When applied to the material, this silence is able to restore the world of objects to a comparable illegibility, indecipherability, and most notably, reminds the subject of the unspeakability of things.  As poetic language eludes the logical functionality which dictates so much of standard discourse, so too does the unspoken speech of objects defy the confines of typical human communication.

It has been believed by many that the writing-act is possessed of an infinite possibility, and hence that it could, when orchestrated effectively, embody a prism for unheard experiences of the material world.  In the act of literary composition, however, there arises a point in language where experience evades the grasp of expression, where the word stumbles towards failure.  And upon reaching this juncture, all self-assured utterances intent on defining and elucidating seem to fall inextricably short, incapacitated in their attempts to name that which is characterized by its very unknowability.  Similarly, in our attempt to understand the material object, at some point a crossroads is reached so that the inhuman aspect (i.e. the poetic) might take over, a space where the human might not fully enter and the unknowability of the thing becomes its most defining facet.         

Hence, while at first glance the relationship between material silence and language might appear oppositional, upon closer examination the interplay between these two seemingly disparate phenomena proves itself to be far more immediate and in fact reciprocal.  In this way, to understand writing as a means to material silence (as opposed to expression) entails an understanding of writing as an illustration of the unspeakable, an aesthetic medium wherein language ultimately strives towards its own sublation (in other words, where silence supercedes language and thereby renders it obsolete).  It is for this reason, then, that the experiential element of silence is so imperative to understanding it as possessing a material nature—it is arguably the closest way to approximate an engagement with such a transfigurative process.  Thus, writing may no longer operate under the pretense of a systematic transmission of ideas, and thereby acting as an emissary of meaning, but has reoriented itself as an untamed creative force of the unspoken.  It is under this same logic then that, while the language of objects may remain indecipherable to humans, the exchange between the two is undeniably present.

To conclude our discussion of material silence, let us turn finally to a contextual environment where silence is of the utmost importance: amidst the practitioners of Sufi mysticism.  Indeed, for the Sufis, silence is understood as a state of ecstasy caused not by unity or harmony, but by a rupture between the material self and the immaterial mind.  In several circles, to reach silence is the greatest metaphysical achievement for a mystic, or, as the poet Jalal al-Din Rumi dictated: “Become silence.”  In this respect, this ambitious goal involves not only intense meditation, but the symbolic destruction of the physical body, the body considered a burden of the physical world.  In order to accomplish such a feat, the Sufi mystics fall into a fever-dream, a state of frenzy and unrest, (a state not unlike that which defines the ephemeral nature of sound), whereupon the silence has had a physical, sensory, material affect as they rock back and forth in contemplation.  At this point, a convoluted trajectory is attempted wherein the subject (presence) becomes absence (the annihilated) ultimately to become immanence (ecstasy–which is manifested through this reciprocal, paradoxical silence).  Consequently, a strong parallel emerges between that which the Sufi mystics seek—the state of delirium as embodied by the rupture between material and immaterial—and the paradoxical nature of silence, a sensorial event determined by its materially ambiguity.

In the end, then, what might be learned from this strange auditory phenomenon, and what might it teach us about the object world?  If we accept the argument that since it is able to be perceived, it may be considered material, then we must accept the importance of perception and cognition (and perhaps by extension, phenomenology) in apprehending all things.  In the same instance, however, the object’s capacity to remain sovereign and independent of the human world is essential in designating its “object status”—a position denied to auditory stillness.  As such, it is for this reason that silence, in its role as a material non-object, is able to occupy such a unique position in the world of things and humans, giving access to the mysteries both of poetic language and the inhuman realm.  It is material enough to be experienced, but far removed enough from the object world as to retain a heightened accessibility.  Thus, perhaps what is most compelling about this material silence is what it might teach us about that which is unknowable—encountered but never fully understood, it lies outside the imposition of meaning and knowledge and belongs instead to the obscure realms of perception and experience.  Empowered by this raw materialism, silence collapses the immaterial into the material, an auditory absence into a palpable presence, language into the poetic, until all that is left is the movement between.        

works cited

Baudrillard, Jean.  Fatal Strategies.  Cambridge, MA: Semiotext(e), 1990.

Beckett, Samuel. Stories and Texts for Nothing.  New York: Grove Press, 1967.

Blanchot, Maurice. L’Ecriture du Desastre, Paris: Gallimard, 1980.

Deleuze, Gilles. “He Stuttered”, in Essays Critical and Clinical.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.