File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2003/lyotard.0303, message 66


Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 13:09:35 -0800
From: Judy <jaw-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: silence


steve, all
Your words bring to mind Nixon's 1969 construction of the "great 
silent majority" idea, as he struggled agasint the Vietnam war 
opposition.  It was a powerful phrase, energizing war proponents, 
demoralizing war opponents. Its force was hammered home in the 
massive overwhelming defeat of George McGovern in 72 (largely thanks 
to determined and shameful media efforts to caricature and discredit 
him).  This 'great silent majority' force continues to reverberate in 
its haunting and daunting American relevance.

Here is an excerpt from Nixon's speech:
http://chnm.gmu.edu/hardhats/silent.html
>  Let historians not record that, when America was the most powerful 
>nation in the world, we passed on the other side of the road and 
>allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people 
>to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism.
>
>So tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow 
>Americans, I ask for your support. I pledged in my campaign for the 
>Presidency to end the war in a way that we could win the peace. I 
>have initiated a plan of action which will enable me to keep that 
>pledge ["Vietnamization"]. The more support I can have from the 
>American people, the sooner that pledge can be redeemed. For the 
>more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to 
>negotiate in Paris.
>
>Let us be united for peace. Let us also be united against defeat. 
>Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate 
>the United States. Only Americans can do that.


Eventually though the refusal of silence did defeat, or cause some 
setbacks, to this US global agenda and ended its staggering atrocity 
agaisnt the Vietnamese.  However, the peace settlement itself was 
unfortunately silencing.  Conversation and learning about what was 
mistaken about the US in Vietnam, and its wider implications for US 
foreign policy, stopped, and most people have been left not to 
understand why the war was wrong, or even clearly that it was wrong. 
A majority never opposed the war on moral grounds, but only because 
it wasn't worth the cost.  US history books present the story to the 
young very superficially. The moral questions raised by imperialism, 
or that imperialism was involved at all, are left in silence

"fools" said i, "you do not know
silence like a cancer grows
hear my words that I might teach you
take my arms that I might reach you"
but my words like silent raindrops fell
and echoed in the wells of silence...
P.Simom, 1964

steve, i appreciate your comments on silence, keep on going
Judy





>Don/All
>
>Interesting that you bring up Blanchot and Beckett - Besides neither 
>of them can be considered as 'silent' to much noise, too many texts. 
>Considering that the silence I was thinking of was related to the 
>normative belief that silence is an acceptance of the dominant 
>hegemony. Related to my current experiences of the stop the war 
>campaign in the Spectacle silence is understood as a means of 
>assigning the silent person a status as a supporter of the war.
>
>But I was not strictly speaking considering this - rather I was 
>thinking that 'silence' as acqiesence emerged at around the same 
>time as the spectacle - which i'd date as around the great crisis of 
>1926-29 - at this point in the history of 20th C things changed 
>dramatically. Perhaps silence as acquiesence becomes normal at the 
>same time as the sound film appears (those who are silent become 
>simply extras) - but more accurately it is better to think, to 
>understand it, because of the nearly universal franchise that 
>emerges at that time and the place where silence becomes interpreted 
>as agreement and acceptance of the correctness of the 
>representatives in the parlimentary democracies...
>
>Personally i prefer noise, the chaotic interference of white noise, 
>to the silence of unproblematic communication - which is impossible
>
>regards
>steve
>

-- 

"Reality is nothing more that a stubbornly persistent illusion" - 
Albert Einstein.

   

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