Giving Voice to Silence

Book excerpt: This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2016. Silence must be one of the words in the English language that has one of the most varied and bizarrely contradictory set of notions connected to it. This book explores the multiple dimensions, the binary opposites and contradictions, and gives voice to silence in all its monologic, dialogic and absent glory. The chapters are collated from authors around the world who came together at an Inter-Disciplinary Press conference in July 2015 to discuss and deliberate on the nature of silence. Each author provides his or her own particular perspective, resulting in a range of writing which addresses silence across religious, inter-personal, social and political, literary, spatial and artistic dimensions. The collection as a whole highlights and embraces some of the strange paradoxes of silence and asks an implicit question: how, through giving voice to silence, might we re-imagine what is present, visible and audible in our lives?