Silence: A Politics

Ferguson, Kennan

doi:10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300054

Cited by 70 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…As with graffiti elsewhere (Halsey and Young :297; Schacter :48; Young :91), erasing the graffiti did not achieve its absence but rather produced new socio‐spatial effects. In Ciqikou, this erasure could be understood as a silencing of residents’ voices, but silence can also become a potent poetic medium, simultaneously evading and eliciting interpretation in ways that destabilise dominant narratives and facilitate community building (Ferguson ). As a silence that could be seen, the erased graffiti in Ciqikou became an everyday reminder of residents’ shared opposition to their dislocation, reinforcing their resistance to demolition and eliciting new conversations about the injustice of their displacement.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial Poetics Under Authoritarianism: Graffiti and the Contestation of Urban Redevelopment in Contemporary China

Smith

2020

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This article investigates the expression of resistance to urban redevelopment in the authoritarian context of contemporary China. Where conventional channels of public expression are closed, the very space of urban transformation becomes an important medium of contestation. Through the practice of "spatial poetics", residents manipulate the taken-for-granted meanings attached to urban space, challenging the spatial codes that authorise redevelopment. Working across four spatial dimensions-territory, place, scale, and network-these poetic manipulations allow residents to de-naturalise existing power structures, escape their effects, and re-code space with alternative meanings. The article illustrates the practice of spatial poetics through an analysis of Ciqikou, a historic district of Chongqing undergoing redevelopment. Residents expressed their resistance to redevelopment by writing slogans on buildings slated for demolition. By emphasising relationships of scale, network, and place, residents' graffiti challenged the territorial basis of the Chinese party-state's redevelopment project and revalorised the neighbourhood as worthy of preservation.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial Poetics Under Authoritarianism: Graffiti and the Contestation of Urban Redevelopment in Contemporary China

Smith

2020

Antipode

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“…As a tactic it does not necessarily aim to disrupt everyday life in the way that a massive demonstration blocks traffic or alters city life; yet it revitalizes and transforms it by disrupting one's senses. Thus understood, the modality of silence discussed here is not the outcome of mechanisms of silencing, such as censorship or exclusion; it is 16 not to be perceived as disempowerment (Ferguson, 2003;Jungkurz, 2012). Rather, as tactical and critical practice 'keeping silent' is a deliberate political choice that aims to address a particular occasion by transforming it.…”

Section: 'Keeping Silent' As Democratic Activismmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Political theorists are also aware of the polysemy of silence. Ferguson (2003), for example, explicitly argues that silence functions 'in multiplicitous, fragmentary, even paradoxical ways', being thus irreducible 'to any particular political functionality' (Ferguson, 2003, 58). He also points to the inherent power of silence, 'whether as a form of subjugation, resistance, or motivation' (Ferguson, 2003, 50), as well as to its dual constitutive function: on the one hand, it creates identities and enables communities, on the other it disrupts organization.…”

Section: The Polysemy Of Silencementioning

confidence: 99%

Disturbing Binaries in Political Thought: Silence as Political Activism

Hatzisavvidou

2015

Social Movement Studies

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‘Keeping silent’ can be a meaningful political event, a form of political activism that generates new political subjectivities and alters existing realities by reconfiguring power relations. To flesh out this argument, this paper attends to a particular silent protest and affirms it as a tactic employed by an emergent political collectivity to make itself perceptible, declare an injustice and challenge institutional power. As such, the silent event under scrutiny does not merely invite a turning of our attention to a practice that breaks the association of the political subject with the speaking subject; it also invites a reconsideration of what we are accustomed to accept as political activism. ‘Keeping silent’ is a critical practice, indeed, because it manifests an alternative possibility of being and acting; in so doing, it disrupts established patterns of thought and practice, and more specifically the rigid distinction between speech and silence

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“…There are variations in the nature of silence. Therefore, neither speech nor silence is inherently liberatory or oppressive, though it is always related to how power is negotiated and produced because it underscores the positioning and sometimes struggle between parties over the discourse that is viable in a situation (Duncan, 2004;Ferguson, 2003;Ladson-Billings, 1996). Just as language and discourse are intimately connected to power and knowledge, so is silence (Baldwin, 1951;Fairclough, 2001;Foucault, 1975).…”

Section: Framing Silences Of Race Class and Gender In Schoolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Silencing Racialized Humor in Elementary School: Consequences of Colormuting and Whiteness for Students of Color

Yoon¹

2019

BRE

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Racial humor among students of color presents a sociopolitical dilemma for teachers, requiring rapid calculations of if and how to respond in ways that support an inclusive and equitable classroom climate. This analysis uses two instances of racial humor in an elementary classroom to unpack a White teacher's responses to students of color who were both creators of and audience to racial jokes. Starting from the point of affirming the teacher's decision to intervene, findings explore the ramifications of how intervening had multiple, layered consequences for the dynamics of silencing and racialization among students of color. The purpose of this approach is to model how to sift through the complications of silencing race talk and to support conceptual and practical conversations about anti-racist pedagogical moves in the midst of fleeting, meaningful moments in classroom socialization to race.

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Silence: A Politics

Cited by 70 publications

References 28 publications

Spatial Poetics Under Authoritarianism: Graffiti and the Contestation of Urban Redevelopment in Contemporary China

Spatial Poetics Under Authoritarianism: Graffiti and the Contestation of Urban Redevelopment in Contemporary China

Disturbing Binaries in Political Thought: Silence as Political Activism

Silencing Racialized Humor in Elementary School: Consequences of Colormuting and Whiteness for Students of Color

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