I am reading a book titled "Silence" by John Biguenet. The book leads me through the pop culture, history and meaning of silence. Until March of this year, many of us spent hours in the uninterrupted noise of airports. The only relief from the announcements and crowds is in the airport lounges for business class passengers. They have silence at a considerable cost.
Some of us seek silence through meditation practice and by inhabiting quiet spaces. Biguenet tells us the history of silent reading. Then he introduces us to the Unspeakable.
The Holocaust survivor Theodor Adorno said in 1949 that after the Holocaust no one should write poetry. The Holocaust and other genocides silence millions. The Armenian Genocide silenced more than million voice. The Holocaust silenced six million. The starvation of millions in Ukraine by Stalin, the Stalinist purges, and millions killed by Mao and Pol Pot followed by slaughter in Rwanda and Yugoslavia forced silence by death.
Biguenet then says torture is the opposite of genocide. A person tortured chooses to be silent. The torture is supposed to break that silence through agony.
Genocide survivors write and speak to give voice to the millions who were silenced. Those who are tortured choose silence at a great cost, possibly at the cost of their lives.
Both genocide and torture are horrible, but for opposite reasons from the perspective of silence.
Silence is part of a series of books called Object Lessons. Short books about specific things like Phone Booths, Drones, Silence, The Wheelchair, The High Heel, Traffic and fifty other titles. My next book is about The Bookshelf.
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