Silence: The Currency of Power edited by Maria-Luisa Achino-Loeb (original) (raw)

2008, American Ethnologist

The impact of the edited volume Silence: The Currency of Power lies in the overarching argument that silence(s) (as both noun and verb) do not exist as a homogenous category of absence. It is not, as Beeman argues regarding music, that silence is a universal emptiness but rather a "type of sound, contrasted with other types of sound … [it] is likewise a construction" (p. 24). Silences are contextually produced and interpreted. As the case studies in Brazil, South Africa, South Carolina, California, the Philippines, Newfoundland, and North Carolina demonstrate, "silence" informs human perception (Maria-Luisa Achino-Loeb); genre boundaries (Beeman); language policies (Cook); blame and inclusion-exclusion (Anne E. Kingsolver); class and gender formation (Pauline Barber); shame and racialization (Robin Sheriff); memory and culture (Gerald Sider); and, of course, anthropological fieldwork, recollection, and analytical construal (James Fernandez). The organizational logic of the volume is provocative and, in my mind, sets the volume apart from the current literature on silence and power. The first section concerns the role of silence in the foundational operations of meaning making. Both Saussurian semiology and Peircian semiotics are invoked in these texts. For Beeman, the relational aspect of silence (he deploys the design metaphor of figure-ground) is what structures musical compositions into sections and signals conversational turn taking.