The Sound of Silence: Rethinking Resistance

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By : Ronjinee Chattopadhyay Department of Sociology, UG - 3 

The human tendency to fall back on binaries, unsurprisingly, also infiltrates social scientific notions of cultures of protest. Conventionally, speech has been seen as the only way to resist injustice, while silence has been equated to complicity or apathy. At a time when ideological polarization has gone on to reach new heights, such a dichotomous perception gets magnified throughout popular discourse. Notably, even studies which seek to interrogate the speech-silence binary replicate the very framework they seek to transcend. By locating silence in either of the extremities of collusive violence or unabashed resistance, they impede attempts to take a nuanced look at the potential that silence holds as a mode of expression, dissenting or otherwise. However, the novelty of silence lies in the space that it opens up for interpretation by virtue of the absence of any fixity of meaning (Ferguson 2002). This piece attempts to demonstrate how silence can operate as a mode of resistance by feigning complicity while also bolstering speech. Investigating the role of silence in popular movements becomes all the more significant when considered in the current context of growing public discourse protesting the ongoing violence being unleashed in Palestine. 

In a ‘modern’ milieu where speech, visibility and clamour are privileged over contemplation and stillness as markers of productivity, silence is shunned away by social justice movements as recourse for the spineless who dare not challenge the status quo. Institutional mechanisms in society further serve to reinforce the apparent efficacy of speech in the deliverance of justice; it requires mustering courage and numerical strength to have one’s voice heard within a system structured to help those who, in the first place, help themselves by ‘speaking up’. Arguments seeking to uphold the value of silence as a viable mode of resistance in this context are thus often faced with the question of effectiveness - fundamentally, the need to ascertain the extent to which silence can satisfactorily achieve the same ends as speech when it comes to having one’s interests heeded. Contemporary history is replete with instances of silent dissent that stimulated arguably effective responses from the state and society - China’s blank paper protests in response to the government’s zero-COVID policy, and the 2009 silent protests in Iran as a challenge to disputed national election results, to name only a couple. More recently, in December 2023, Times Square, NYC saw silent marches by Jewish Americans in protest of the killing of children in Gaza by Israel. As protestors gathered in the heart of the bustling city, the shrouded effigies of children they strewed on the streets served as silent, glaring reminders of the suffering borne by Palestinians. While these instances demonstrate the potency silence holds in resistance, it is also necessary to develop a conjunctive understanding of speech and silence as modes of protest, for one is rarely utilized without the other. 

Just as silence requires deliberative speech to be made intelligible, speech requires silence to buttress its efforts. It may be argued that the institutions of modernity can function to aid such coalescence, ironically enough by constraining the space accorded to each to be employed effectively. Digital social media proves to be one such institution, made increasingly relevant in current times. Broadly, the case of technology is particularly interesting in that it functions as a double-edged sword - it surveils that which renders visible, through the very process of making it visible. Social media platforms, for instance, run on algorithms which glean out patterns in topics spoken about the most, dub them as ‘trends’ and amplify them further to create a self-reinforcing cycle where the same kind of content permeates across the application. Such platforms also keep an eye on the kind of content that garners attention, monitoring it so as to create an inventory of information pertaining to the content as well as the creators and consumers of the same. Social media monitoring and surveillance of this kind has grown to become an everyday reality that users of the technology have learnt to account for. Recently, in light of the growing pro-Palestine discourse on social media, hundreds of users speaking out about the violence in Palestine alleged that they were being ‘shadow-banned’ - a situation where a social media user is effectively blocked from meaningful usage of the platform as their posts and activity are made invisible or less visible to their followers. While social media giants like Meta have dismissed any possibility of such intentional censorship, this essay does not aim to delve into the question of the material truth of such shadow-banning. What is crucial here is the perception of being silenced, and the responses it evoked. 

Through the perceived shadow-banning of voices speaking out on an issue considered deeply controversial, social media threatened to constrain the space for self-expression on a platform ostensibly created for the same. In response, several individuals enacted a false silence for the platform, to regain visibility. People raising awareness about the situation in Palestine by posting videos would often attach captions containing only trending keywords, often entirely unrelated to the content of the video,  to fool the algorithm into enhancing the posts’ reach on the platform. Often, satirical, or allegorical references to the violence and the geopolitical situation have been employed while filming entirely unrelated and mundane activities, such as cooking. In a situation where speech threatens vulnerability to surveillance and censorship, silence, or the illusion of it, came to be actively employed by those looking to keep the conversation alive. This was a conscious move made, especially in a situation where public opinion on the issue is largely being moulded by the discourse on social media. Deliberate, protective silence and charged speech are being combined to bypass probable suppression in what constitutes a single, unique mode of resistance specific to the context it emerges in. Resistance of such a nature is arguably insidious, and ingeniously so. 

Instances such as the ones discussed in this essay underline the need to formulate a layered understanding of protest cultures, one which acknowledges that silence and speech are indeed intertwined aspects of socially moulded expression. To draw from Jonathan Cott’s succinct encapsulation of Susan Sontag’s thoughts on stereotypical binaries, silence and speech seem to echo each other, “much like the pile on the velvet that, upon reversing one’s touch, provides two textures and two ways of feeling, two shades and two ways of perceiving” (Cott, 2013). 

References: 

1. Cantrell, D. J. (2021) Transformative Silence and Protest. Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, 22(1), 84-117. 
2. Cott, J. (2013). Susan Sontag: The Complete Rolling Stone Interview. Yale University Press
3. Ferguson, K. (2003). Silence: A Politics. Contemporary Political Theory, 2 (1), 49-65. DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300054
4. Wagner, R. (2012). Silence as Resistance before the Subject, or Could the Subaltern Remain Silent? Theory, Culture & Society, 29(6), 99-124. 
5. Chabanet, D. & Royall, F. (Eds.). (2014). From Silence to Protest: International Perspectives on Weakly Resourced Groups. Ashgate.