This edited book examines silence and silencing in and out of discourse, as viewed through a variety of contexts such as historical archives, day-to-day conversations, modern poetry, creative writing clubs, and visual novels, among others. The contributions engage with the historical shifts in how silence and silencing have been viewed, conceptualized and recorded throughout the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, then present a series of case studies from disciplines including linguistics, history, literature and culture, and geographical settings ranging from Argentina to the Philippines, Nigeria, Ireland, Morocco, Japan, South Africa, and Vietnam. Through these examples, the authors underline the thematic and methodological contact zones between different fields and traditions, providing a stimulating and truly interdisciplinary volume that will be of interest to scholars across the humanities.

Seeing and experiencing the world as it is is freedom and peace in itself, but the spiritual seeker who seeks the answer to life’s biggest mystery, "Who is the experiencer of the I," must aspire, through self-contemplation, to find an articulate, all-embracing answer to the true meaning and significance of the concepts of “freedom” and “peace.” What is their true power. Can freedom and peace be internalized through the intellect, or is true, genuine freedom and peace an experience and a state in itself, a state where true and false do not configure, a state where opposites cannot force their entry, an unshakable point in the emptiness, in the empty space. In the empty inner and outer space, united and undivided, where silence and awareness merge in an ... By embracing silence in an atmosphere of absolute presence, where the limitations of language fade away and the all-pervading power of silence fills the space surrounding the human body, communication will occur without effort. This eternal, ever-present silence is the universal language for all beings that enter this universe. Observing each other in silence is to transcend the world of conclusions, where outwardly, two different entities with their own perceptions of the world, limited by nationality, culture, and religion, merge into one entity that communicates through the timeless language of silence. The most profound discovery we can make on this stage of life is that there is no “I,” that our existence is merely a mental projection playing out in the mind, through the stormy sea of learned concepts and ideas.

Focusing on individual authors from Heinrich Boll to Gunther Grass, Hermann Lenz to Peter Schneider, The Language of Silence offers an analysis of West German literature as it tries to come to terms with the Holocaust and its impact on postwar West German society. Exploring postwar literature as the barometer of Germany's unconsciously held values as well as of its professed conscience, Ernestine Schlant demonstrates that the confrontation with the Holocaust has shifted over the decades from repression, circumvention, and omission to an open acknowledgement of the crimes. Yet even today a 'language of silence' remains since the victims and their suffering are still overlooked and ignored. Learned and exacting, Schlant's study makes an important contribution to our understanding of postwar German culture.

"Finding silence amidst restlessness is what makes creative life possible-and death comprehensible. But how do we find-more importantly, how do we "understand"-silence while immersed in the chattering of the digital age? Have we forgotten how to listen? Are we less prepared than ever for the ultimate silence that awaits us all? Mark C. Taylor's new book is a philosophy of silence for our nervous, buzzing present, a timely work for a world where noise is a means of distraction, domination, and control. Here Taylor asks the reader to pause long enough to hear what is not said, and to attend to what remains unsayable. But in his account, our way to "hearing" silence is to "see" it: Taylor explores variations of silence by considering the work of leading modem and postmodern visual artists, from Barnett Newman and Ad Reinhardt to James Turrell and Anish Kapoor. Drawing also on the insights of philosophers, theologians, writers, and composers, he weaves a rich narrative modeled on the Stations of the Cross. "We come from and return to silence; in between, silence is the gap, hesitation, interval that allows thoughts to form and words to emerge," he writes. His chapter titles suggest our positions toward silence--or rather, our pre-positions: Without. Before. From. Beyond. Against. Within. Around. Between. Toward. With. In. Recasting Hegel's phenomenology of spirit and Kierkegaard's stages on life's way, Taylor translates the traditional "Via Dolorosa" into a Nietzschean "Via Jubilosa" that affirms silence in the midst of noise, light in the midst of darkness"--

Inhabited Silence in Qualitative Research demonstrates, or «puts to work,» poststructural theory in the doing of qualitative research. Using this theoretical approach, the book proposes a data set lacking in the methodological literature, namely silence. It highlights the need for qualitative researchers not to dismiss silence as an omission or an absence of empirical materials, but rather to engage silence as meaningful and purposeful. This is an important book that should be read by researchers, teachers, and students.

Choo's Evidence provides a lucid and concise account of the principles of the law of civil and criminal evidence in England and Wales. Critical and thought-provoking, it is the ideal text for undergraduate law students.

Silence exists at the edge of the world, where words break off and meaning fades into ambiguity. The numerous treatments of silence in Steven L. Bindeman’s Silence in Philosophy, Literature, and Art question the misleading clarity of certainty, which persists in the unreflective discourse of common experience. Significant philosophical problems, such as the limits of language, the perception of sound and the construction of meaning, the dynamics of the social realm, and the nature of the human self, all appear differently as a consequence of this questioning. Silence is shown to have two modes, disruptive and healing, which work together as complementary stages within a creative process. The interaction between these two modes of silence serves as the dynamic behind the entire work.