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- Convenors:
-
Katja Hrobat Virloget
(University of Primorska)
Nina Vodopivec (Institute for Contemporary History, Ljubljana)
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- Format:
- Panel
Short Abstract:
The panel addresses the question of how to write the untellable when ethnologists are faced with silence. The aim is to compare and offer ethnographic methodological tools to grasp and understand the heterogeneity of silence(s) and to build the basis for a comparative ethnography of silence(s).
Long Abstract:
Silence does not only encompass an absence of a speech or voice, but it can be a strong medium of communication. It can be filled with words, affects and emotions, enclosed in bodily memory practices or embodied memory. In ethnographic research, silence is influenced by the research position. However, ethnologists are not trained to research silence.
Scholars of collective memory have given attention to representations of the past and its silences, omissions, connected to memorial conflicts. Silence can be connected to repression, when individuals bury traumatic, painful memories in the subconscious. In this case we could speak about trauma or trans-generational trauma as an inability of verbalisation and narration. In a cross-cultural comparison silence can be linked to the concept of historical trauma of indigenous groups. However, silence can be triggered by more recent causal factors of structural violence, inequality, and other ongoing forms of material dispossession and political domination. Silence can be the consequence of ethnic, national, political, class-based and colonial violence, a traumatic experience which can be studied in relation to structural violence or social suffering. It can be explored in the direction of phenomenology and within the framework of affect theory by examining how silences are embodied and mediate emotions and feelings. Avoiding a universalizing and homogenising categorization of silence and reflecting on the different roles of silences in individual and social contexts the panel aims to methodologically grasp silence in its diverse aspects, to understand silence(s) and study methods of its exploration and interpretation.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper Short Abstract:
The paper explores the silences in groups connected to the Istrian exodus, focusing on how their collective identity is shaped by shared silence. It examines the links between these silences and transgenerational trauma, memory conflicts, hybrid identities, and research positionality.
Paper Abstract:
This research, part of the project Ethnography of Silence(s), explores silence as a product of power dynamics, memory conflicts, and unarticulated trauma. It investigates methodologies for detecting silence and its diverse meanings.
Adopting a comparative approach, the study focuses on groups connected to the Istrian exodus—a large-scale migration of mostly Italian-speaking people from Yugoslavia after WW II. These traumatic borderland memories have been subject to political manipulation: some narratives have been silenced, others amplified, to construct competing national victimhood discourses. The research traces the formation of silences across varied social contexts, examining groups such as Italians who remained in Yugoslavia as a national minority, Istrian refugees in the contested border zone around Trieste, the diaspora in Australia, and immigrants from former Yugoslav republics in depopulated Istrian towns. The identity of these groups is based on the conspiracy of silence as an undiscussable, uncomfortable secret connected to denial, shame, marginalization, etc. Silences often stem from memory conflicts and traumatic experiences, shaped by whether memory is collective or individual. Unspoken memories may be transmitted intergenerationally through embodied experiences, creating "victims" of an inexperienced past. Conversely, silences may also reflect the denial of fluid, changeable borderland identities, framed within the concept of "national indifference." By studying these diverse groups, the research captures varying scales of memory and silence, influenced by the researcher's positionality—whether perceived as perpetrator, victor, insider, or outsider. The paper will observe also the consequences of the anthropological articulation of silence.
Paper Short Abstract:
The paper focuses on the possible approaches to the silent, living presence of the past that is not brought about by stories. The central thesis is that the past is not just represented in narratives and documents about the past but is silently present in the social space, in the background, shaping (often haunting) everyday existence.
Paper Abstract:
During my research on the history of the war in Croatia and ex-Yugoslavia, I was surprised that I didn’t conceptualize the crucial theoretical problem by focused analysis of records, stories, and texts about past events but by sudden encounters with what was silently present - a wartime atmosphere - we thought was irreparably gone forever after the war.
I researched the history of the war through an autoethnographic recollection of my memories and insights into the experiences of others in written records and research interviews. This type of research included collecting oral and written stories about traumatic events during the breakup of Yugoslavia and their interpretation. Also, during the research, I often casually talked with friends and acquaintances about that period. These everyday conversations were essential because they opened the path toward the central research theme. During our discussions, we were not just telling each other personal or collective stories about the people, places, and processes. But parallel to our discursive production, we sensed a wartime atmosphere that we needed to explain. This atmosphere suddenly emerged as it never faded away as it was waiting for us all these years. The paper focuses on the possible approaches to these silent, living presence of the past that is not brought about by stories. The central thesis is that the past is not just represented in narratives and documents about the past but is silently present in the social space, in the background, shaping (often haunting) everyday existence.
Paper Short Abstract:
This presentation focuses on the language of loss, viewed as a series of omitted spaces in language filled with something else. The research is based on accounts of surviving family members of B.M. (1940-1942), as well as on transgenerational transfer of knowledge of her destiny. Through transgenerational transfer of memory and knowledge, the story of B.M.’s life was gradually transformed from a story about loss to a “detective” story, a story complemented by historical sources.
Paper Abstract:
B.M. was born in 1940. She is listed as a victim of Jasenovac (1942), the largest concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War. However, her destiny is not entirely known. She was a brunette, and her “voice” is reduced to two sentences remembered by the family. This presentation focuses on the language of loss, viewed as a series of omitted spaces in language filled with something else. The research is based on accounts of surviving family members, as well as on transgenerational transfer of knowledge of her destiny. Through transgenerational transfer of memory and knowledge, the story of B.M.’s life was gradually transformed from a story about loss to a “detective” story, a story complemented by historical sources. Special attention will be given to recorded “detective” stories about her life and possible circumstances of her death, viewed as a process involving extended family members who communicate about a current problem triggered by a story of a past experience, event or narration about a past narration. “Detective” stories are viewed as a communication phenomenon growing out of the everyday struggle with the inability to fully and unambiguously comprehend the world and events, the phenomenon trying to fill in the unknown and silenced spaces of a difficult wartime experience and master the language of loss and the loss itself. They are not only the source of socialization of family values, but also the object of socialization of new family members.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper focuses on the intergenerational transmission of war memories among families of those who lived through the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and those who fled during the war outside of the war zone and created a diaspora community. It provides insights into the relationship between memory transmission and social and geographical contexts, such as between the homeland and the diaspora (Bloch, 2015; Munro, 2016; Yordanova, 2018). Notably, it examines the experiences of generations that have directly encountered violence and their children born after the violence (Hirsch, 2012; Pohn-Lauggas, 2019; Welzer, 2010). The fieldwork study was conducted in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 2022 and 2023, and in the EU countries and the United States in 2023 and 2024. This study included biographical narrative interviews, semi-structured interviews with all household members, ethnographic work in a broader social environment, and participant observations in everyday activities and social interactions. Memory transmission is a dialogical, processual, and narrative construction formed by intergenerational co-creation of meaning to family and societal reality. This paper presents the results of fieldwork on how the transmission of memories goes between generations through one of the channels, such as family secrets and silences, and how those silences were handled but also broken during significant historical and political events.
Paper Abstract:
This paper focuses on the intergenerational transmission of war memories among families of those who lived through the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and those who fled during the war outside of the war zone and created a diaspora community. It provides insights into the relationship between memory transmission and social and geographical contexts, such as between the homeland and the diaspora (Bloch, 2015; Munro, 2016; Yordanova, 2018). Notably, it examines the experiences of generations that have directly encountered violence and their children born after the violence (Hirsch, 2012; Pohn-Lauggas, 2019; Welzer, 2010). The fieldwork study was conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the EU countries, and the United States between 2022 and 2024. This study included biographical narrative interviews, semi-structured interviews, and ethnographic work in a broader social environment. The transmission of family memories is not in a list of events but exists and shapes the communication between family members regarding past events (Pratt & Fiese, 2004). Memory transmission is a dialogical, processual, and narrative construction formed by intergenerational co-creation of meaning to family and societal reality. This paper presents the results of fieldwork on how transmission goes between generations through one of the channels, such as family secrets and silences, and how those silences were handled but also broken during significant historical and political events like the wars in Palestine and Ukraine. I am interested in 'silences'—when parents withhold their memories from the next generation—and explore the motivations behind this silence and how children cope with it.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper examines the methodological and personal challenges faced during research on sexual violence as a weapon of war in the Ethiopian Civil Conflict (Tigray, 2020-2022). It explores the silences of both survivors and perpetrators, questioning how researchers navigate dangerous environments and ethical dilemmas.
Paper Abstract:
The following paper emerged in parallel to the research I carried out for my Master’s thesis: Revealing Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War: The Case of the Ethiopian Civil Conflict in Tigray 2020-2022. Through the fieldwork undertaken, there was a realization to which I came to while facing the multiple obstacles my work faced. The core of this examination of methodology came from the challenge posed by the unspoken crimes both from the perspective of the survivors – those dealing with the physical and psychological consequences inherent to being a victim of sexual violence; as well as from the point of view of the silence of the perpetrator – those who, in fear of being exposed and prosecuted for the crimes, deny any implication and set up a barrier between researchers, media and the places of the crime.
My paper seeks to unveil the deeply rooted impediment to anthropological research in place whenever one seeks to go into the field and research such topics. By bringing to light this obstacle I shall seek then to question how to research and attempt to answer it. For, when a researcher cannot speak or must calculate every step meticulously, fearing personal danger or political prosecution, for those involved in the research, the question then must also come of how anthropologists must pose themselves in dangerous fieldwork environments. An attitude which must then be translated into a method which grasps the silence as a hidden voice against its use as a weapon.
Paper Short Abstract:
The paper examines the silence of deindustrialization, the affective and embodied experiences of industrial workers in post-socialist Slovenia. By presenting silence in the context of structural violence that has led to the embodiment of repressed traumatic experiences, it aims to explore how silence can be analysed in relation to the body and affects in the field.
Paper Abstract:
The paper points at different forms of silence that I have encountered in my research on deindustrialization in post-socialist Slovenia over the last 20 years. The focus is on the intimate and social experiences of industrial workers, their bodily sensations and psychological feelings of dispossession (material, political, social, symbolic and physical). Silence is seen as a constitutive part of remembering and forgetting in deindustrialization but I want to examine it in relation to workers’ pain and structural violence. The case study of the 2009 garment factory collapse in Slovenia will be used to discuss the ethnographic dilemma of how to analytically capture silence in the field and interpret the difficulties in articulating the experience of shock. The thesis is that the silencing of the sewing machines was a structural violence that led to the embodiment of repressed feelings that manifested in various symptoms and damaged the workers’ bodies and minds, with far-reaching effects also on the younger generation and the wider local community (Lee Linkon 2018). The violence continues in the daily lives of the workers after the closure of the factory, as their struggles and feelings have been silenced.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper will draw on fieldwork with Syrian women in Scotland to explore how corporeal articulations of silence can shape a sense of (non)home. By paying attention to embodiment, we can trace the effects of silence without excavating or disturbing what it holds.
Paper Abstract:
Silence is recognised as a multifaceted form of communication, not merely lack of speech, and yet it has often been overlooked in ethnographic work in favour of what is present or voiced. How can we explore silence without speculation? And what are the ethics of doing so, when participants have chosen to leave something unvoiced? This paper argues that silence is a corporeal experience (Frers, 2013) and as such, the body can be used to study silence(s) without excavating or disrupting it. Drawing on multilingual fieldwork exploring meanings of home with Syrian women in Scotland, this paper reflects on a particularly resonant example of silence. A participant shared a folk song in Kurdish, her mother tongue, expressing yearning and homesickness – sentiments conspicuously absent from our conversation, in which she avoided discussion of Syria or her life there. Instead of speculating why the participant avoided particular topics, I explore how paying attention to embodiment can create space for silence to be “heard”. The multiple, embodied silences between us included affective reactions, embodied refusals to speak on the aforementioned subjects, the silences (and silencings) that arise in translation between Kurdish, Arabic and English, and the conspicuous longing of the song in contrast to the participant’s resolute silence on these topics in conversation. I explore how each of these corporeal articulations of silence shape a sense of (non)home. Most crucially, this embodied approach to silence allows us to trace its effects without attempting to articulate or disturb what it holds.
Paper Short Abstract:
Asbestos objects are hazardous but also evoke silent issues: negative emotions, a fraught history, and unheard voices. By using a case study, interviews, a focus group, and controversy mapping, this presentation visualises emotions, silences, and power dynamics surrounding these contested objects.
Paper Abstract:
Asbestos-containing heritage objects challenge museums due to health hazards and safety concerns. However, there are also silences surrounding this heritage that are currently overlooked: (1) the negative emotions asbestos evokes because of its fatal health risks, (2) the fraught history behind the asbestos industry that knowingly endangered lives and until today does not take responsibility, and (3) voices outside museums, such as people who suffer from asbestos diseases, that are not heard. When confronting these silent perspectives with the dominant museum perspective there can be friction. For example, an asbestos object can be unique and of high historical value. However, for individuals harmed by asbestos, these values may be secondary to personal suffering and negative emotions.
This presentation explores these complexities through the case study of one museum object. By engaging multiple stakeholders – such as museum professionals, heritage communities, and individuals affected by asbestos – the study moves beyond the material hazards of asbestos to address emotion, unheard voices, the contested history, and affected people. Using interviews, a focus group, and controversy mapping, the research unfolds in three phases. First, individual interviews map personal emotions, experiences, and viewpoints. Next, the stakeholders interact during a focus group, using the methodology of Emotion networking to express their feelings, articulate their perspectives, and reflect on how hearing other voices influences their stance. Finally, a controversy map is presented and visualises the emotions, viewpoints, silences, and dynamics between different stakeholders while uncovering how knowledge claims and power structures play a role in this.
Paper Short Abstract:
Starting from an analysis of the polysemous silences encountered during ethnographic research on the experiences of Basque language speakers, in this paper I propose to reflect on the embodied and intersubjective ways in which we (learn to) participate in and co-construct silences in our fieldwork interactions.
Paper Abstract:
Silence entered my research among euskaldunes (Basque language speakers/Basques) in Pamplona-Iruñea (Spain) unexpectedly. A certain reticence, whispering voices, ambiguities, euphemisms or statements that “this cannot be told” surrounded and mediated discussions of experiences related to histories of political activism, suffering and the so-called Basque political conflict. These multimodal and polysemous silences can be analysed as - but, importantly, cannot be reduced to - neither just the silence of traumatised individuals and societies (Kidron 2009), nor the silence of resistance, opposing hegemonic narratives (Mehdi 2024), and also not just the silence of secrecy around outsiders with whom sensible knowledge cannot be shared (Jones 2014). They speak of the past as well as to the present.
While I acknowledge the multifaceted nature of the unspoken, in this paper I proceed to focus on the intersubjective dimensions of silence(s) as they were enacted and expressed in my ethnographic interactions. In particular, I propose to pay attention to the ways in which we, ethnographers, come to embody, sustain and co-construct (or disrupt) silences during fieldwork as a means of apprehending what silences are and feel like. My aim is not to reveal what might lay beyond the unspoken, but rather to explore the affects and effects of silences as we experience them in relation to our research participants. Ultimately, I ask whether reflexivity on the ways in which we partake in/of silence(s) (sense an interlocutor's reticence, start to lower our voices, discern ambiguities…) may be a useful methodological and epistemological approach for grasping them.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper explores silence among Azerbaijani women through ethnographic research, examining life under Soviet and post-Soviet regimes. Using Foucault’s discourse theory and Assmann’s forgetting framework, it reveals silence as both a result and tool of power, shaped by oppression, fear, and memory control.
Paper Abstract:
This paper examines the phenomenon of silence encountered during my fieldwork. The study is grounded in ethnographic research conducted in 2022 and 2024 with women from four cities in Azerbaijan, focusing on their recollections of life under the Soviet regime and during the transition to post-Soviet contexts. By applying Michel Foucault’s theoretical insights on discourse and Aleida Assmann’s framework on forgetting, this paper explores the relationship between silence and power. The analysis highlights key contributors to silence, such as internalized oppression, political ignorance, and the act of forgetting. Power dynamics often dictate who is allowed to speak and what may be expressed, with deviations from these norms potentially leading to punitive consequences. This instills fear and fosters long-term silence. Silence, as argued, may also stem from a lack of discursive practices, which, following Foucault’s (1969) proposition, limits knowledge: the less discoursive practice occurs, the less individuals know, and the more they are inclined to remain silent. The paper posits that Azerbaijani women exhibit lower levels of political awareness compared to men, as evidenced by their limited participation in public political discussions, particularly during the transition period. Additionally, silence may arise from active form of forgetting, a strategy that helps uphold power structures. Authorities often suppress certain histories or narratives that challenge their dominance, as emphasized by Assmann (2016). This paper aims to uncover how silence operates as both a consequence and a mechanism of power, shedding light on the intricate interplay between memory, discourse, and control within Azerbaijani society.
Paper Short Abstract:
In First Nations communities in Canada, affected by the trauma of genocide, silence can be a locus of shared pain. This silence is particularly pain-filled during encounters between those who are intoxicated and those who are not. This silence is interpreted in different ways by the people involved.
Paper Abstract:
During my doctoral fieldwork in Chisasibi, an Eeyou (First Nations/Indigenous) community in Northern Quebec, Canada, I conducted participant-observation and informal interviews with community members who identified as drinkers. I also spoke with many other community members, all of whom had either been drinkers or had drinkers amongst their loved ones. Due to the impacts of centuries of colonial genocide, no Indigenous communities are unaffected by intergenerational trauma, including addictions and other socially disruptive elements. But despite this shared trauma, there are many instances of “silence” in which things that are too painful to be said in words are expressed in other ways. From the point of view of many in the community, drinkers need to talk about their emotions to heal, but not when they are drunk. In this state, they are considered dangerous. They are to be avoided or met with silence to avoid provoking them. But that silence is a sad silence, filled with the empathy of shared trauma. From the point of view of those labelled “drunks”, however, drunkenness is the only state in which they are comfortable talking. Sobriety is uncomfortable and leads to another kind of silence. But that silence is also far from empty. Based on what drinkers and former drinkers shared with me, silence is a shame-filled state in which the pain of trauma cannot be articulated in words. The silence they remember meeting during drunken encounters fuels this shame, leading to fear of more rejection and, of course, to more silence.
Paper Short Abstract:
Silence entails different meanings. It can indicate a state of subjugation as well as acts of resistance. The paper analyses the notion of silence in relation to the coloniality of power and its repercussions on a Diné indigenous community on the Navajo-Hopi territory in North America.
Paper Abstract:
Silence entails different meanings. It can indicate a state of subjugation whereby a community is being coerced into silence or it can signify a form of resistance as the act of silence may entail a choice endorsed in response to domination. The tensions in between meanings are a constant as anthropologists attempt to de-code silence in different socio-cultural contexts within histories of colonial domination where indigenous communities continue to struggle and resist new forms of displacement. In this paper I analyse the notion of silence in relation to the coloniality of power and its repercussions on a Diné (Navajo) indigenous community from Big Mountain, a remote region located on the Navajo-Hopi disputed land in the state of Arizona (USA). Diné communities like many other indigenous native tribes across the Americas, have faced colonial domination throughout centuries. In present times, they still experience the repercussions of a colonial legacy, which continues to disrupt their lives. The struggle for survival is the norm while resiliency is the driving force that enables indigenous peoples to thrive in the pursuit of their daily living and wellbeing. The weight of colonial disruption is still omnipresent and to decipher the meaning of silence within its oppressive and hostile reverberations is not a straightforward matter. The analysis in this paper is structured within an interdisciplinary methodological approach, which takes into reflection the notion of “historical trauma” with the aim to deepen even further the question of silence in post-colonial indigenous societies.
Paper Short Abstract:
Silence envelopes the ethnography of slavery in provincial Sierra Leone. We consider ways in which this silence might be probed - records of enslaved carriers from Sierra Leone in the Kamerun campaign (1915), sickle cell gene anomaly (HbS), and personal testimony. We also consider consequences.
Paper Abstract:
Slavery was once widespread in provincial Sierra Leone. The institution was not abolished until 1928. The ethnography of slavery in Sierra Leone is almost entirely a silence. This silence needs to be understood because a legacy of slavery can be detetected in more recent events, not least the decade-long and exceptionally brutal civil war of the 1990s. Our paper is based on encounters with slavery, in both our research and in our personal lives. We consider three such encounters: work on records relating to carriers from eastern Sierra Leone in the Great War in Kamerun, examined while searching for a possible source of Lassa fever virus in Sierra Leone, work on interpreting regional data on the sickle cell gene anomaly (HbS), and personal testimony relating to family history. We conclude the presentation by considering the merits of giving voice to this silent institution, and how this voice might revise our understanding of larger highly problematic events, such as the Atlantic slave trade.
Paper Short Abstract:
This talk considers the imagination and experience of silence in rural areas of the European High North. It seeks to understand silence not as the absence of sound or of logocentrist production of words or voice, but rather a resource existing across multiple, diverse social and nature-based forms, carrying with it multiple significations.
Paper Abstract:
This talk considers the presence of silence as it is imagined and experienced across rural landscapes in the European High North. This research understands silence not as the absence of sound or of logocentric words, but rather a resource that exists across multiple, diverse social and nature-based forms, carrying with it multiple significations. Through an investigation of how the material and symbolic infrastructures of silence give it meaning as it is produced, consumed and experienced in various Arctic communities, I aim to deconstruct the expectations of silence through its wider social and cultural processes, to show silence to be a fundamental aspect of everyday life and to cultivate it as a utilizable immaterial resource. Using mixed methods from across several disciplines (anthropology, geography, environmental humanities, soundscape ecology), I will also think through the various forms of observation and documentation that can be used to encapsulate the significance of silence, and consider how to implement nuanced understandings of the significance and role of silence in everyday life, across pasts, futures and presents.
Paper Short Abstract:
In my presentation, I will analyse interviews with Holocaust survivors in the city of Szeged, Hungary. I turn my attention to representations of the past and its silences and omissions. I seek to answer the question: what are the conflicts of memory that this silence creates? How and why did they manage to break this silence? Finally, I would like to present the method of narrative interviewing.
Paper Abstract:
In my presentation, I will analyse interviews with Holocaust survivors in the city of Szeged, Hungary. They are the personal stories of individuals who experienced the dramas of the Shoah as children (from babies of a few months to children of 12 years).
In the context of the narratives recorded on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Holocaust, I turn my attention to representations of the past and its silences and omissions. I seek to answer the question: what are the conflicts of memory that this silence creates? It is a well-known fact that secrets are a burden. It is a burden on the one who does not tell it, and also on the one who is kept in silence about something that (also) belongs to him. This kind of memory situation is characterised by taboos, forgetting, the appearance of forgetting, traumatic and painful memories buried in the subconscious. Through the narratives of my interviewees, I explore how they relate to silence and silencing. Did they choose it themselves, did they not have the opportunity to speak, or was it an inheritance? How did they experience it? I would also like to point out when, how and why did they manage to break this silence? Finally, I would like to present the method of narrative interviewing. Why I considered this technique, which focuses on the individual, to be an appropriate way to interview the survivors of this historical trauma.