Silence as Presence: Care and Limits of Voice

Anthro Talks Seminars Autumn 2024

A collaboration with the Centre for Urban Wellbeing

Speaker: Iza Kavedžija, University of Cambridge

‘Giving voice’ can be an empowering metaphor for the process of creating space for another’s perspective, allowing for their experience to be noted and attended to. Yet it is also a metaphor that relies on a particular form of articulation. Voice and narrative share many of the same strengths and limitations: for some, they are powerful tools of sense making and communication; but for others they can elude important forms of experience and fail to capture many of the more inchoate aspects of lived life in general. What happens in those moments when words fail, or are simply absent? In addressing this question via fieldwork in a community space in Osaka, I explore how silence can constitute an affective space of care. Shared silences are felt in their duration, the passing of time brings them about. In these contexts, silence is not merely an absence, but an index of presence.