The Silence and the Agency of Matter

Abstract

Since the linguistic turn in the social sciences, consideration of the concept of emergence as well as the contextualized analysis of speeches in political theory have been gaining relevance. On the other hand, New Materialism has sought to highlight existing deficiencies of the language perspective when it comes to attending to the possibility of agency exercised by non-human matter.

Recent emphasis on language and everything that takes the form of speech has resulted in a disregard for silence as a key element in political action. Change in that regard began to occur with Kennan Ferguson’s innovative article (Silence: A Politics) which goes beyond considering silence as “the absence of sound” and an element of resistance to power. Nonetheless, Ferguson’s vision remained clearly anthropocentric. We believe it is necessary to explore the possibilities of applying Ferguson’s expanded understanding of silence’s political role to non-human and even non-animal realities and manifestations. Such manifestations are affected by human action, and humans’ effect on them is thus a political problem. To address that problem, we argue, the concept of what we call “matter agency” and a new understanding of speech acts are needed.