Abstract
This paper argues that the gesture of being silent —or “subjective silence”— can be described as a specific modulation of attention, in which consciousness gains awareness of a specific realm of experience where the body appears as a transcendental dimension of the self. Taking Dauenhauer’s typology as a point of departure, I will describe what I understand with the expressions “subjective silence” –and “the gesture of being silent”– and try to show its specific relation to “attention,” according to Husserl’s description of it. Second, that the noematic field of this “subjective silence” is the realm of the pre-predicative, since it allows consciousness to maintain a certain intentional tension that does not focus on any categorial object. Finally, I will try to show that in this realm of the pre-predicative, the body appears as an immanent dimension of consciousness and, therefore, not as a mere object but as a transcendental instance of the self.
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Notes
For the empirical and observable considerations of silence as a constitutive element of discourse, see the work of Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson (1974), as well as the more recent work by Nikolic (2016), by Chowdhury, Stepanov, Daniel & Ricccardi (2017), or the interdisciplinary compendium of Jaworsky (1997). Notably, the results obtained by empirical social research find remarkable coincidences with the phenomenological perspective. Both reveal the profound semantic aspect that silence has, even in brief moments within a conversation. I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting this line of inquiry.
The consideration of the body as transcendental suggests that silence is not only an attentional phenomenon but also ontological. The ontological relationship between language and silence, that is, the position of language in the general economy of being, as carefully explored by both Martin Heidegger (1996: §35, 165) and Emmanuel Levinas (2009: 77) in a non-transcendental way, is transformed here in the relationship between ontology and body. Being is not only revealed to language and through language but also to the body and through the body.
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Abbreviations
Hua IV: Husserl, Edmund. 1952. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. Ed. M. Biemel. Husserliana 4. Martinus Nijhoff; Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy. Second book: Studies in the phenomenology of constitution. Trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989.
Hua VI: Husserl, Edmund. 1954. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie. Ed. W. Biemel. Husserliana 6. Martinus Nijhoff; The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology: An introduction to phenomenological philosophy. Trans. D. Carr. Northwestern University Press, 1970.
Hua XV: Husserl, Edmund. 1973. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil: 1929–1935. Ed. I. Kern. Husserliana 15. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Hua XXXVIII: Husserl, Edmund. 2004. Wahrnehmung und Aufmerksamkeit. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1893–1912). Ed. T. Vongehr and R. Giuliani. Husserliana 38. Springer.
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I am grateful to I. Quepons and E. A. Behnke, who read previous versions of this article and gave me important recommendations to achieve its final version
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