The sound of silence in pedagogy

Educational Theory

Volumn 54, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 193-210

  Zembylas, Michalinos ^a,b   Michaelides, Pavlos ^b  

^a MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b INTERCOLLEGE   (Cyprus)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 26944437541     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.0013-2004.2004.00005.x     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. Huey-li Li, "Silences and Silencing Silences," in Philosophy of Education 2001, ed. Suzanne Rice (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 157.
2. Bernard Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980).
3. See Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992); and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1995).
4. Max Picard, The World of Silence, trans. Stanley Godman (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952), 15.
5. Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Nortvale: Jason Aronson, 1987). The notion that silence communicates messages can be seen in popular descriptions of silence, such as "silence is golden," "silence is threatening," and "silence as a weapon."
6. Picard, The World of Silence, 15.
7. We are indebted to an anonymous reviewer for pointing us in this direction.
8. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (New York: Humanities Press, 1961), 149.
9. Karmen MacKendrick, Immemorial Silence (New York: SUNY Press, 2001).
10. Kathleen Yancey and Michael Spooner, "Concluding the Text: Notes Toward a Theory and the Practice of Voice," in Voices on Voice, ed. Kathleen Blake Yancey (Urbana, Illinois: NCTE, 1994), 304.
11. See Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury Press, 1970);
12. and Peter McLaren and Henry Giroux, Critical Pedagogy and Predatory Culture (London: Routledge, 1995).
13. Louis Mackey, Peregrinations of the Word: Essays in Medieval Philosophy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 9.
14. Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 149.
15. Pat Belanoff, "Silence: Reflection, Literacy, Learning, and Teaching," College Composition and Communication 52, no. 3 (2001): 400.
16. MacKendrick, Immemorial Silence, 4.
17. Robert Oliver, Communication and Culture in Ancient India and China (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1971).
18. Via negativa, as understood in the Latin tradition, is the mystical theology developed by the great representatives of apophatic thought, such as Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Dionysius the Areopagite. Added to this are the interpretations and innovations made by later scholastic teachers such as Hugh and Richard of St. Victor, the representatives of Augustinian, cataphatic mysticism
19. Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 150.
20. Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, trans. Susan Hanson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 337.
21. Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology, trans. Clarence Edwin Rolt (New York: Kessinger, 1997).
22. Paul Tillich characterized the meaning of "God above God" in Dionysius as follows: "God is beyond even the highest names which theology has given to him. He is beyond spirit... beyond any possible highest being. He is supra-divinity, beyond God.... Therefore, 'he is unspeakable darkness.' By this combination of words he [Dionysius] denies that God, in view of his nature, can be either spoken of or seen. Thus, all the names must disappear after they have been attributed to God, even the holy name 'God' itself." See Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), 92.
23. Jill LeBlanc, "The Act of Silence," Philosophy Today 39, no. 3 (1995): 325-328.
24. St. John of the Cross quoted in LeBlanc, "The Act of Silence," 325.
25. LeBlanc, "The Act of Silence," 325.
26. Dionysius the Areopagite, The Soul Afire (New York: Pantheon, 1945), 19.
27. See Youru Wang, "Liberating Oneself from the Absolutized Boundary of Language: A Liminological Approach to the Interplay of Speech and Silence in Chan Buddhism," Philosophy East & West 51, no. 1 (2001): 83-99.
28. We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this correction.
29. For example, the Chan Buddhist masters Huangbo Xiyun and Wanling Lu emphasized this idea. See the Buddhist Wisdom Books, trans. Edward Conze (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1958);
30. and Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History, vol. 1, trans. James W. Heisig and Paul Knitter (New York: Macmillan, 1988).
31. Ramundo Panikkar, The Silence of God (New York: Orbis, 1989), 41.
32. MacKendrick, Immemorial Silence, 5.
33. See, for example, Perry Gilmore, "Silence and Sulking: Emotional Display in the Classroom," in Perspectives in Silence, eds. Deborah Tannen and Muriel Saville-Troik (Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex, 1985), 139-162;
34. and Stephen Rowland, "The Power of Silence: An Enquiry Through Fictional Writing," British Educational Research Journal 17, no. 2 (1991): 95-111.
35. See Mary Budd Rowe, "Pausing Phenomena: Influence on the Quality of Instruction," Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 2, no. 2 (1974): 203-224;
36. and Vera P. John, "Styles of Learning - Styles of Teaching: Reflections on the Education of Navajo Children," and Richard V. Dumont, Jr., "Learning English and How to Be Silent: Studies in Sioux and Cherokee Classrooms," in Functions of Language in the Classroom, eds. Courtney B. Cazden, Vera P. John, and Dell Hymes (Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland, 1972), 331-343 and 370-394 respectively.
37. For a recent discussion of the importance of waittime in teaching situations, see John Loughran, Developing Reflective Practice: Learning About Teaching and Learning Through Modelling (London: Falmer, 1996).
38. Li, "Silences and Silencing Silences," 157-158.
39. See Nikolas Rose, Inventing Ourselves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
40. Lynn Fendler, "Teacher Reflection in a Hall of Mirrors: Historical Influences and Political Reverberations," Educational Researcher 32, no. 3 (2003): 21.
41. Li, "Silences and Silencing Silences," 161.
42. See Nicholas Burbules and Rupert Berk, "Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy: Relations, Differences, and Limits," in Critical Theories in Education: Changing Terrains of Knowledge and Politics, eds. Thomas Popkewitz and Lynn Fendler (New York and London: Routledge, 1999), 45-65.
43. Ibid., 61.
44. Michalinos Zembylas, "Interrogating 'Teacher Identity': Emotion, Resistance, and Self-Formation," Educational Theory 53, no. 1 (2003): 107-127.
45. For more on this point, see Michel Foucault's work, for example, "On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress," in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, eds. Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 229-252.
46. Susan Verducci, "Silence and Talk," Educational Theory 50, no. 4 (2000): 533-540.
47. In this article Verducci reviews two books of feminist communication theory that contribute to moving us in the direction discussed in this essay: Robin Patric Clair, Organizing Silence: A World of Possibilities (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998);
48. and Maryanne Neely Ayim, The Moral Parameters of Good Talk: A Feminist Analysis (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997).
49. The term "harmful silences" is borrowed from Tillie Olsen, Silences (New York: Delacorte, 1978). Sherry Anderson and Patricia Hopkins write about Olsen's harmful silences: "Times that are 'dark with silences' are times when she and others remained mute, letting what needed to be expressed die over and over again in themselves. 'There are no natural silences,' she says, not 'that necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation, in the natural cycle of creation.' Rather they are dark silences, 'the unnatural thwarting of what wants to come into being, but cannot."' See Sherry Anderson and Patricia Hopkins, The Feminine Face of God: The Unfolding of the Sacred in Women (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), 111-112.
50. Panikkar, The Silence of God, 14.
51. See Harry A. Wilmer, Quest for Silence (Am Klosterplatz, Switzerland: Daimon Verlag, 2000).
52. See Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969);
53. and Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985).
54. Emmanuel Levinas, The Levinas Reader, ed. Seán Hand (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 130-131.
55. See Emmanuel Levinas, "Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite," in To The Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Adriaan Peperzak (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1993), 96.
56. Emmanuel Levinas and Richard Kearney, "Dialog with Emmanuel Levinas," in Face to Face with Levinas, ed. Richard A. Cohen (Albany: SUNY Press, 1986), 21.
57. In the Buddhist perspective, the Buddha's silence is an act of compassion that removes the embeddedness of contingency by pointing to the void ("ontological" silence) without which recognition of the Other and otherness is not possible. All contingent assumptions of knowing the Other in and through the Buddha's silence allow for the meeting of the Other as Other. This is precisely what brings forth compassion, generosity, openness, and receptivity.
58. Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).
59. Bill Readings, "Foreword," in Jean-François Lyotard, Political Writings, trans. Bill Readings and Kevin Paul Geiman (London: UCL Press, 1993), xxv.
60. Megan Boler, "The Challenge of Interpreting Silence in Public Spaces," Philosophy of Education 2001, ed. Rice, 166-169.
61. Sharon Todd, "Teaching with Ignorance: Reflections on Social Justice, Empathy, and Being for the Other" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 2002).
62. Li, "Silences and Silencing Silences," 163.
63. Ibid.
64. Hannah Arendt used the term "contemplative" to emphasize that people need to withdraw to find peace and understanding and that it is within such withdrawal that the "contemplative life" begins. See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).