Silence &—
SILENCE &—
What is silence? Might it be a gaping void or a buzzy medium—the absence
(presence) of articulation, the limit and condition of being? Whether in Marx’s
mute compulsion of capital, Freud’s operations of the drives, or Derrida’s secret
solemnity of a duty to recall, silence is everywhere. As the liminal that potentiates
possibility across academic landscapes and political realities, wherever silence is,
silence is not/ought not be. The question of an (un)intelligible, (il)legible S/subject
is a loud force: Gayatri Spivak’s analysis of the subaltern, Homi Bhaba’s points on
the politics of narration, the noise in Saidiya Hartman’s archives of slavery, Franz
Fanon on the racialized colonial psyche, Hélène Cixous’ decapitated woman, &—
Silence is never merely about absence; its presence entangles enunciation.
Silence, therefore, is a knot; it is the complexity of words spun together, every
flowing stream of sentences forcefully stringing out reflections on inclusion and
exclusion. To what extent is it an act of self-preservation, of resistance? To what
extent is it violence? We identify silences by sounding the unsound(able), avowing
the disavowed, and materializing into thought the unthinkable.
Colloquium “SILENCE &—” invites inquiries that take silence as a heuristic to
think through problems such as foreclosure, aporia, and impasses as they
manifest in philosophy, literature, aesthetics, politics, or culture. In this spirit,
we welcome you to engage with silence in all capacities and across
disciplines including but not limited to: Black critical theory, philosophy,
environmental humanities, animal studies, postcolonial and subaltern
studies, feminist and queer theory, disability studies, sound studies, literary
theory, science and technology studies, religious studies, media and film
theory, performance theory, classical studies, and psychoanalysis.
Points of entry may include: Aporias, Absences, Affects, Aesthetics, Archive,
Archival Violence, Blackness, Compulsion, Desire, Deconstruction,
(De)materialization, Emotionality, Failure, Form, Grammar, Historical
Materialism, Impasses, Indigeneity, Liminality, Matter, Noise/Sound,
Opacity/Transparency, Passage/Vestibularity, Performance, Performativity,
Paradox, Relationality, Refusal/Withdrawal, Semiotics, Specters, Spectrality,
Spirits/Ghosts, Sex, Sexuation, Spaciality, Subjection, Testimony, Temporality,
Voice, Voicelessness.
In-person presentations in English, French, or Spanish are accepted. Each
presentation will last between 15 and 20 minutes. Interested applicants must
submit an abstract of no more than 250 words.
Submit by January 16tth to: