Filozofija i drustvo 2020 Volume 31, Issue 4, Pages: 569-576
https://doi.org/10.2298/FID2004569P
Full text ( 228 KB)
The silence of the other: The voice and the sign
Popović Una (Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad), unapopovic@ ff.uns.ac.rs
This paper is about the interconnectedness of the realm of language with that
of social interactions, constitutive of all human communities. Arguing
against the traditional and still present primacy of the rationally based
understanding of language, I wish to stress the possibility of another
approach to language, strongly related to the question of the Other. Relying
on the idea that the Other is a constitutive part of any linguistic
situation, I wish to inspect how it is possible for the voice of the Other
to be suppressed or silenced, and if that is the case, how we should
understand the silence of the Other. The main result of my findings is that
the silence of the Other is not only meaningful, but that it can have
positive social and political effects, including the enhancement of the
sensitivity for the various modalities of the voice of the Other.
Keywords: silence, voice, sign, language, the Other, society, presence, absence