Abstract
In this chapter, Gould proposes that silence in modern literature and philosophy is best understood according to two interrelated categories: apophasis and reticence. Gould associates apophasis with negative theology and its legacy in modern thinking, particularly Wittgenstein, whereby silence and the unsayable are understood according to a logic of transcendence. Gould associates reticence, meanwhile, with a more phenomenological approach to silence, particularly in the work of Heidegger, whereby silence is associated instead with listenership and a withholding of speech or language. Eventually, Gould arrives at the motif of the “silent voice”, through the work of both Giorgio Agamben and Jean-Luc Nancy, a third term that resists the logic of both apophasis and reticence.
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Gould, T. (2018). Apophasis and Reticence. In: Silence in Modern Literature and Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93479-2_2
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