Abstract
The definition of silence is as vast as the definition of language, movement, noise, or sound themselves. It is so because rather than in opposition or mere contradiction to language, movement, noise, or sound (Kurzon, Discourse of silence. Amsterdam, John Benjamins: 1998), silence is that which blossoms in between them, in interdependence with them (Lehmann, The cultural psychology of silence. Treasuring the poetics of affect at the core of human existence (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway: 2018a). Hence, silence is not to be understood as a pure emptiness, a pure absence, a pure pause: silence is rather a room for the possible. In between one musical note and another, in between words, in between body signals, in between our actions, in between the unexpected noises from the environment, there is a space and a time for being and becoming. Acting at times as a boundary that precedes the unfolding of the future, and at times as a room for reminiscence or to deepen our present experiences, and some other times as the reminder of the uncertainty that belongs to our human condition, silence is always redirecting us somewhere; it enhances attention inward and outward.
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Lehmann, O.V. (2022). Silence. In: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_225-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_225-1
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