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Still the Silence: Feminist Reflections at the Edges of Sound

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Silence, Feminism, Power

Abstract

This book provides a series of reflections on the paradoxes and transformative possibilities of silence. Our title, Silence, Feminism, Power: Reflections at the Edges of Sound, evokes the paradoxical relationship between sound and silence that is obscured when we assume an equation between voice and agency, and its inverse equation—silence and oppression. Our impulse is to challenge the binaristic relationship that has been assigned since antiquity to voice vis-à-vis silence. We seek to break with the Western tradition, reiterated from Aristotle to Audre Lorde, that locates silence as a site of reform and privileges voice as the ultimate goal of and means to achieve empowerment. If one of the major interventions we have inherited from Lorde (1984b) is that the “master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (110), our work seeks out new tools of speaking, listening, and wading into the fullness of silence.

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Authors
  1. Aimee Carrillo Rowe
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  2. Sheena Malhotra
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. California State University, Northridge, USA

    Sheena Malhotra

  2. California State University, Northridge, USA

    Aimee Carrillo Rowe

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© 2013 Aimee Carrillo Rowe and Sheena Malhotra

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Rowe, A.C., Malhotra, S. (2013). Still the Silence: Feminist Reflections at the Edges of Sound. In: Malhotra, S., Rowe, A.C. (eds) Silence, Feminism, Power. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137002372_1

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