Concealed Silences and Inaudible Voices in Political Thinking / Michael Freeden.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Freeden, Michael, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political science--Philosophy.

Political science.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 295 pages)

Place of Publication:

Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2023.

Summary:

"This book investigates silence as a normal, ubiquitous and indispensable element of political thinking, theory, and language. It explores the diverse dimensions in which silences mould the different core features of the political-by summoning-up finality, by contributing to rendering support for communities or withholding it, by processing consent or dissent, by the manner in which it secures continuities or generates ruptures, and by its role in shaping national time, public memory and collective identity. Not least, silence is a highly flexible power resource, both enabling and constraining major social practices, traditions, and currents. The emphasis of this study is primarily on the concealed, unintentional, and unrecognized ways through which silence pervades socio-political life, departing from the typical focus on intentional silencing and the dominance of logos. Instead, silence adopts the guises of the unspeakable, the ineffable, the inarticulable, and the unconceptualizable. En route, silence is juxtaposed with stillness, absence contrasted with lack, agency set against undetected conventions, and the veiled paired with the wondrous. Drawing extensively from historical, philosophical, anthropological, psychoanalytical, theological, linguistic, and literary viewpoints, the book demonstrates the common threads that connect silences to those different disciplines, alongside the features that pull them asunder. In extracting and decoding their political implications, it explores both academic literature and colloquial, everyday discourse. Selected case-studies elaborating the overall analysis include topics such as Buddhist nondualism, Locke's tacit consent, the submerging of historical narratives, state neutrality, Pinter's miscommunications and menace, and the separate ways ideologies integrate silence into their beliefs".

Contents:

Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Acknowledgements Contents A Non-musical Prelude Intermezzo: A Taster I. INTERPRETING AND MAPPING: CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF SILENCE 1. Layers of Silence 1 Detectable and Hidden Silences 2 Agentic and Non-agentic Silences 2. The Political Elements of Silence 1 The Thought-Practices of Thinking Politically 2 The Ubiquity of the Political 3. Analysing Silence: Initial Considerations 1 Charting the Paths of Silence: Alternative Contours and Configurations 2 Naming: Acoustic Purism and Semantic Latitude 3 The Reach of Silence 4 Alternative Non-silences: Sound and Noise 4. Silence, Stillness, and Solitude 1 Silence and Logos 2 Stillness 3 Solitude 5. Absence, Lack, and Removal 1 The Indeterminacy of Absence 2 Radical Lack 3 Removal 6. The Dog that Did Not Bark: Listening for Silence 1 In Pursuit of Elusiveness 2 Academic Predispositions 7. Seven Modalities of Silence 1 The Unthinkable 2 The Unspeakable and/or the Unsayable 3 The Ineffable 4 The Inarticulable 5 The Unnoticeable 6 The Unknowable 7 The Unconceptualizable 8 Two Afterthoughts 8. Silence in Language and Communication 1 The Discursive Distribution of Silence 2 The Micro-structures of Silence 3 Uncommunicative Silences? II. DECODING AND INVESTIGATING: SILENCES IN THE LIVED WORLD 9. The Temporalities of Silence: Theology, History, Anthropology 1 Theological and Philosophical Silences 2 The Silences of History 3 Tangled Linearities 4 Disciplinary Circumspection and Erasure 10. Superimposed and Invented Voice 1 Crowding Out 2 Dead and Unborn Silences 11. Tacit Consent and Attributed Consent 1 Locke's Tacit Consent: Unwritten Implications 2 The 'Silent Majority' 12. The Socio-cultural Filters of Silences 1 Buddhist Ineffability 2 Thresholds and Transitions 3 The Modalities of Silence and Their Social Roots 4 Dramatic Silences 13. State and Government Silences 1 The Quietism of States, Governments, and Constitutions 2 Neutrality and Abstention 3 Commemoration 4 Univocality 14. Ideological Assimilations of Silence 1 Ideological Networks and Ideological Spaces 2 The Proliferation of Ideological Silences 2.1 Liberal Silences 2.2 Feminist Silences 2.3 Anarchist Silences 2.4 Conservative Silences 2.5 Reformist and Radical Silences 2.6 Populist Silences 2.7 Nationalist Silences 2.8 Illiberal Silences Coda Bibliography Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Includes index.

ISBN:

0-19-257002-1

0-19-187195-8

0-19-257003-X