Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay <>]

PRAGMATICS OF SILENCEME

A TRIBUTE TO JOHN CAGE 

				PRAGMATICS OF SILENCEME " If Linguistics is stipulated, for the time being, as an epistemological discipline for the deployment of algocentric (a discourse that is motivated by metama...
				View on www.academia.edu	Preview by Yahoo

 

“Silence itself is defined in relationship to words, as the pause in music receives its meaning from the group of notes round it. The silence is a moment of language; being silent is not being dumb; it is refuse to speak, and therefore keep on speaking.” – Jean Paul Sartre.  1948. What is Literature?

 

 If Linguistics is stipulated, for the time being, as an epistemological discipline for the deployment of algocentric (a discourse that is motivated by metamathematical formalism or computational algorithmic simulation and which ignores the non-algorithmic constitutive “rules”) meta-symbolic order on the symbolic order, one may find a marginal other in Linguistics—an order of supposed non-signs.  For these non-signs, let me introduce a term: “silenceme”, which is at a time a non-sign and a sign and does not have a fixed componential meaning and thus it violates the law of excluded middle. 

A blank parchment with the supposed seal of Caesar, when “read” by  Antony, swayed the commoners (Julius Caesar, 3.2). In Tagore’s play, Post-office, a conspirator, out of fun, sent a blank letter to an “illiterate” boy, who was expecting king’s letter, when he was waiting for death. However, another character altogether differently interpreted that blank letter. This blankness of the white letter, then, was not interpreted as a poisonous fun, but as a “real” remedy for that boy. 

When you were asking me, “What’re you doing?” I said, “Nothing.” This single word, ”nothing” , a supposed minimal “free” (Where lies the essential freedom of word? ) form, is not free at all—“nothing” ’s freedom was pervaded by “other” non-signs, nothingness, the unspoken or something unspeakable, the non-discursive sonority or unintended sounds (as in John Cage’s musical compositions or in Rauschenberg and Robert Ryman’s Minimalist paintings with almost white surfaces.) 

There may be a strategic taxonomy of silenceme: cognitive silenceme, transcendental silenceme (as in case of seeking absolute silence and that is impossible!); Pathological silenceme (as in case of Foreclosure or Psychosis, the symbolic order is totally or partially rejected [instead of being repressed]; one’s Language Acquisition Device is not working  due to the outside threat and violence); Creative silenceme ( as practiced by some Buddhists by non-internalizing the outside threat and violence.);Silenceme of conspiracy (the phrase “conspiracy of silence” was often used by Marx and Engels)  etc.  Thus, spoke Sartre: being silent does not entail that I am refusing to speak but it is a mode of keeping on speaking . 

What will we, the linguist community,  do with such so-called ambiguous category?  In Linguistics, what will be our agenda now? May we take Wittgenstein or John Cage seriously? Alternatively, we may ignore the silent marginal “other” space in Linguistics: the silenceme!  

The act of speaking (non-silence) is constrained, appropriated, approximated by the unspeakable/ unspoken spaces—so-called blank spaces are controlling the revealed speech. These blank spaces are emitting different meanings in different situations and non-signs were endowed with the supposed sign-ness. That is the de-sign of “silenceme” as it is de-sign-ated within the sign-ness. Silenceme is not absence of speaking, but it is a subjective “perception” of absence of speaking in relation to non-speaking. 

Now I am trying to understand the pragmatics of silence by deploying an Indian philosophical tool called abhava or absence. In the Nyaya-Vaiseska (henceforth NV, Indian Logic) tradition, categories are distinguished based on their presence (bhava) and absence(abhava). They considered both the existence and non-existence as categories, which are subject to the knowledge or cognition by means of generic perception.

In case of relational absence, a qualifier qualifies a qualificand and by negating it we get an “absence of that qualifier” (which is another qualifier) qualifying the same qualificand, “this silent-space X is qualified by speaking-absence Y”. On the other hand, difference referred to “this is not silence” type of negation. Thus, absence of non-speaking-ness and difference from a silence are two distinguishable sub-categories of abhava.

 These blank spaces may be perceived /cognized as a category called “absence” (absence is always designated in relation to something). One could perceive absence by assigning the absential qualifier/ counterpositive to the locus of empty locus/ referend, qualificand. Thus, the absence of speaking means perceiving the dyadic relations between two constructs: speaking and non-speaking in a certain locus. There is no absolute non-speaking silent zone---all silent zones are pervaded by the non-silence and vise versa, however, when, speaking/listening subject is perceiving something as “silence” is actually cognizing “absence” of stipulated non-silence in a locus. Thus, in the terminologies of NV, the  speaking/listening subject perceives the “absence” of counterpositive (stipulated non-silence) in the locus of supposed /stipulated silence.         https://www.academia.edu/4523714/PRAGMATICS_OF_SILENCEME