Saying And Silence

Abstract

When I look back on my exchange with Devlyn, what occurs to me now are the many Bakhtinian ways that our dialogue could have been understood. As readers of the previous chapter know, I originally tried to explain Devlyn's writings through the frame of Aesopianism, through strategies for writing that managed to say something but, at the same time, evaded teacherly and institutional sanctions. After I received his closing response, however, I began to see that Devlyn's struggles with Freire-and my teaching of Freire-had much to do with Devlyn's attempt to negotiate what Bakhtin calls "internally persuasive" and "authoritative discourses." The latter, for Devlyn at least, was constituted of the words of his teacher, classmates, and Paulo Freire-words whose authority Devlyn was inspired to challenge. Thus, when Devlyn somewhat begrudgingly admits that he "did not simply take the information, learn it, accept it, and regurgitate it" but that rather he "absorbed it, twisted it, turned it, cursed it, and tried my hardest to use it against the one who had shown it to me," it would be hard to imagine a more concrete description of the process by which Bakhtin says one takes the alien word "and makes it one's own" (DI 294). Yet there is another way to interpret Devlyn's struggle, one that highlights a key term in the Bakhtinian lexicon: voice. Now, it would be difficult for this reader of his work to characterize Devlyn as a writer who has no voice and is in search of one. No, Devlyn's voice is distinctive, self-assured, provocative to classmates and teacher alike. In our traditional ways of thinking about voice, we might be tempted to say that Devlyn's voice is a complete and sincere expression of his truest self-his values, beliefs, opinions, thoughts, and feelings, the

On Silence, Creativity and Ethics in Organization Studies

“…Corroborating the idea, Russian philosopher Michael Bakhtin, appearing in a themed section of the present journal, suggests silence in conversation, rather than being absent from word utterance, punctuates for pause and effect. The author is credited with ‘the umbrella term, aposiopesis , a rhetorical figure that attempts to capture the persuasive effects of sudden silence ’ (Farmer, 2001, p. 1). Dauenhauer (1980) further distinguishes various qualities of silence: ‘deep’, ‘intervening’ and ‘for and after’ silence, where silence can break off communication, if and when signifying an unwillingness and/or refusal to engage.…”

“…Management and organization studies are not, however, entirely taciturn on the subject. In the organizational literature, silence is considered under its rhetorical aspects, that is, as a way to create impact (Farmer, 2001), and further under its oppressive aspects, in the sense of ‘being silenced’ (Albrow, 1992; Brown & Coupland, 2005; Calás & Smircich, 1991; Clair, 1998; Costas & Grey, 2014; Maguire, Phillips, & Cynthia, 2001; Medina, 2004; Mirchandani, 2003; Perlow, 2003; Wang & Hsieh, 2013). Silence under these aspects has also been theorized in other fields, including feminist and gender studies, language and communication studies, history, sociology and politics (Daly, 1978; de Certeau, 1984; Deetz, 1992; Foucault, 1978; Habermas, 1979; Jaworski, 1993; Rich, 1984; Teahan, 1983; Weedon, 1987).…”