what am I doing? - III

keywords: silence, temporal, space, fluctuation, vague, neutral, being, self-portrait, break, norm, intimacy

..

After searching different combinations of my keywords in Google, the result was not so rich and on point but it made me go over the ideas about silence most of them I’m familiar with. So, I am going to start with a cloud of descriptions of silence, some of them are very rigid, some are fluid.


Silence is the manner of the “powerful, serious and mysterious man/cool girl” trope. 

Silence is something lacking, uncomfortable to many -something to fill in.


Silence is a negative space (Ma as a Japanese concept). A void.


Silence is a break in time. A break in music. A chance to hear other voices. 


Silence is a state of nothingness and stillness conceptualized in Zen Buddhism thought.


Silence is “absence” and “to be silent” is conceptualized as “to be silenced”, “to be not given voice to” in feminist theory . So, in this context, “voice” belongs to the powerful and if you are a minority or a member of a marginalized group, just someone out of the norm, you have to break your silence and claim your voice. Be “visible”. 


Well, pause. But what if "voice" is something that we keep claiming for and nothing changes? Isn’t there always going to be the one who gives the voice in this structure? I am not denying the need to articulate injustice that we are faced with or need to be heard sometimes although I have a problem with this conceptualization of silence. Here, I am articulating but I am not interested in visibility or power.


I think it is important to make a distinction between “to be silenced” and “choosing silence”. And here silence and voice are social constructs to concretize the power structure, as Robyn Fivush pointed out*. Instead of repeating this structure in the name of reversing it, there are the ones that choose “to be in silence”, further “to share their silence”. They are giving the silence an alternative meaning as a space of resistance. Vague, fragile, yet undismantled space to be. And I know this space, I chose this space whenever I needed it or whenever it invited me since my childhood.


...



Silent is not voiceless.



Silence is a part of my presence. 



Silence is a place of my realms, other bodies, other realities - somewhere foggy, neutral. Having problems with fixations and classifications about identity, I am more into fluctuations of being. Therefore, I see “silence” as a temporal space providing a break from fixed determinations and structured norms. A pause from structured reality. And I want to emphasize space again because it feels like something tangible.



Furthermore, I feel the presence of silence in the act of taking self-portraits which I’m doing like a reflex recently. Placing myself in front of the camera creates a temporal space for me to build my own perception of myself, my body and question the gaze that we’re taught; to just be, which gives a feeling of intimacy that I’ve never felt before. I would like to develop an understanding about the relationship between my silence and self-portraiture/photography.





*Fivush,R (2001). 'Speaking silence: The social construction of silence in autobiographical and cultural narratives'. Memory. 18 (2). 88-98.

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