Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic examples from Lithuania, and discusses the aspect of fragmentation of society through silences. It shows how daily matters become a pretext of reference to general order, its principles, social and ethnic differences or the 'lack of patriotism' - to disruptions and splits of the social. But daily life is a world of an individual, which often remains unvoiced and left out of public stage even by individuals themselves. The paper emphasises: any silence is not a neutral stance; it is a discourse that has significant political dimensions (Degnen 2006; Bonshek 2008; Sheriff 2000). Silence is a practise and a social habit that contains lived experiences, hidden subjectivities and non-represented differences, and is able per se to break off social spaces, and to construct different orders.