Sounding Silence

Abstract

As Salomé Voegelin observes, ‘[w]hen there is nothing to hear, so much starts to sound. Silence is not the absence of sound but the beginning of listening’ (2010: 83). Thus, in every sense, one might say that silence sounds. In developing this idea, and as a means of tackling the apparent paradox that it engenders, this chapter pays particular attention to the various ways in which ‘silence’ is experienced.