Fences, Weapons, Gifts: Silences in the Context of Addiction

Abstract

Through the years, many have struggled to understand silence as a phenomenon and as a communicative tool, and the result of this struggle is a multi-disciplinary body of literature full of more contradiction than agreement about the definitions, values, and uses of silence (Acheson, 2007). In much of this work (e.g. Anzaldúa,1987; Foss and Foss, 1991; hooks, 1989; Lakoff, 1990; Olsen, 1978), silence is juxtaposed against speech in a binary of power, with silences and the silenced perceived as less powerful while the spoken and those who speak are deemed more powerful. However, continued scholarly disagreements over silence make it clear that the relationship between silence and speech, as well as the relationship between each of these and power, cannot be explained by a simple binary, and that one’s perception of these relationships is often dependent upon one’s paradigmatic perspective (Acheson, 2007).