Silence
Silence
This chapter focuses on silence—the absence or complete suppression of sound. It presents a reading of the encounter between four intellectual figures and traditions: John Cage and his various engagements with silence; Franz Kafka and his parable, “The Silence of the Sirens”; Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's allegorization of the Sirens episode in Homer's Odyssey; and Jean-François Lyotard's clever deployment of Cage against Adorno's championing of Arnold Schönberg in the former's short statement, “Several Silences.” Precisely in multiplying silences, Lyotard brings out the cacophony that attends silence as a discursive or disciplinary object, whether musicological or philosophical. Moreover, the chapter asks: Are all these nonsilences the same, and if not, what do they sound like? Or, just as important, how do these differences bear on what sound sounds like a provocation to thinking?
Keywords: silence, John Cage, Franz Kafka, Adorno, Horkheimer, Odyssey, Lyotard, Several Silences
California Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
