Narrative silence

The paper analyses three works having employed a similar narrative strategy which triggers tension between the explicable and inexplicable and an interpretative crisis that allows a fantastic reading of the fictional text. This strategy is related to the paradoxical statute of the narrator due to which the reader is faced with an incomplete elliptic account because of the former’s reluctance (or impossibility) to offer a definite interpretation of the events.

My essay interrogates the striking silences in Scott's oeuvre in relation to Scotland's involvement as a partner of the British Empire in the colonization of the Caribbean and in the exploitation of slavery in this region. By drawing from narratological theories (especially those articulated by Robyn R. Warhol and Ruth Rosaler), I treat Scott's silences as examples of 'implicature' — a 'conspicuous silence', which acquires and generates meaning through the interaction of text and context, and represents a form of communication in its own right. Through a discussion of samples from his Letters, Tales of a Grandfather, Rokeby, Rob Roy, The Antiquary and Heart of Midlothian I try to identify the invisible maps of meaning of the unsaid and 'unnarrated'. While suggesting that this approach allows us to articulate a more nuanced perspective on Scott and Scottish-Caribbean relations, I also claim that it allows us to critically rethink the problems and possibilities of engaging with Caribbean slavery in British/ European nineteenth-century fiction

The novel presents a variety of writings of silence; but we limit ourselves, in the context of the present work, to the most relevant aspects, namely interruptions in narratives, narrative ellipses and point of suspension as the particular language of silence. These three modalities nevertheless serve a prolix discourse, and are innovate. Suddenly the novel exemplifies what contemporary literature calls the anti-novel.

In the quest to normalize disabled people the particular ways that disabled peoples’ being-ness has been shaped and formed is often overlooked. Unthinking disability, relegating it to an afterthought, has meant that listening for differences, the silences and the effects of accumulated ableism has not been placed at centre stage (Campbell, 2009). Derrida points out, silence is the origin, the font of all speaking, whereby "silence plays the irreducible role of that which bears and haunts language, outside and against which alone language can emerge" (1978: 54). What is silent is that disabled people as a group and as individuals, I/you have a crip-specific history. If this history is spoken of, it is normally in terms of a history of services – but this is not the same as our history which for many has not only left indelible scars but has intrinsically shaped and formed us.

This paper is a discussion of the processes and politics of listening to difference – different histories, embracing that difference and not subsuming it into an ableist norm. In particular the paper is interested in the accumulative effects of ableism and the negotiation of private and public memory regarding disabled person’s relations with the Australian State. My analysis draws heavily on the work of Connerton, 1989; Farrell, 1998; van Alphen, 1999; and the development and application of notions of ‘grievability’, the ‘grievable life’ (Butler, 2009), ‘regret & guilt’ (Olick, 2007; Schlink, 2009), ‘muted voices’ (Kuhrt & Sancisi-Weerdenburg, 1990) traditionally not specifically applied to disabled people. The challenge is to log survival in an ableist society, to grasp it’s incompatibility and incomprehensibility “…between experiences and the affected person’s capacity to report it due to the fact that real events do not offer themselves in the form of stories” (Reiter, 2005, 13).

It has been nearly thirty years since the commencement of the decarceration of disabled people from institutions and the embrace of a discourse of social inclusion. Drawing upon the discussion of listening and the making of ‘oppositional voice’, the paper also explores the politics of regret  and the  ways memorialisation is signified in the light of recent public apologies by government (indigenous stolen generation, English child migrants), Australian disability policy and contemporary campaigning to close existing institutions as part of the “Shut Out” campaign. Of interest is the different ways ‘voice’ is harnessed to negotiate the disabled past. Finally the mechanisms of accountability to the unheard and the problems of speaking for others are considered with referencing to a relationality model of disability which understands disability to be formed through faulty relations (Hamonet, 2006).

Jane Austen. Silenzi, lacune, allusioni è una raccolta di undici saggi, in italiano e in inglese, che comprende gli atti dell’omonimo convegno svoltosi presso l’Università degli Studi del Molise nel novembre 2017, a cui si intersecano anche contributi ulteriori per approfondire il tema. Anticipati da un’introduzione che evidenzia il filo comune tra le diverse prospettive proposte, i saggi raccontano i silenzi, le lacune e le allusioni nella produzione letteraria di Jane Austen (1775-1817). Fin dalle pagine introduttive alla raccolta, infatti, i curatori evidenziano come parte della grandezza di quest’autrice sia dovuta e confermata non solo dalle abilità stilistiche e retoriche più evidenti, ma inaspettatamente anche dalla sua reticenza.


Francesco Marroni, Francesca D’Alfonso (a cura di), Jane Austen. Silenzi, lacune, allusioni, Lanciano, Carabba, 2018, ISBN 978-88-6344-547-3, €. 18.00.

Mme de Maintenon’s letters often refer to religious silence. Heart of a christian woman’s life, silence is indeed a way to achieve salvation. Practising silence, both in speaking and writing, allows one to master and reduce one’s pride. It is then a good tool to control others, as it is to pursue a spiritual fulfilment.

This paper introduces the concept of narrated silence among rape survivors from the Bosnian war to argue how supposedly unique survivors’ responses have in fact empowered the understanding of sexuality and existing sexual scripts. By using excerpts from scholarly monographs, novels, and feature and documentary movies, the author displays the universal and standardized formats for how we voice, discuss, and think of silence after war rapes across different genres. The continuum of narrated silences reduces survivors to speechless and voiceless spectacles of victimization, which contributes to the preservation of a historic legacy of sexual scripts and the normalization of gender-based violence, abuse, and nonconsensual sexual intercourse among the post-war generations.