State and Government Silences

Abstract

AbstractState silences can be self-assumed when a decision is taken—in its basic constitutional arrangements, or through its agents—to abstain from publicizing a view, or from entering into a performative act, that could be listened to, read, or understood by a relevant grouping. Typical areas may concern issues of abortion, the subscription to religious beliefs, sexual practices, or juridical procedures. A state’s silence can also be the result of governmental ignorance or the opacity of certain individual and social practices. Constitutions supply permanent absences, abeyances, and gaps, obscure and unwritten, through which the potential build-up of political pressure can be averted. Governmental silence as quietude can be perceived as a political expectation. Silence often emerges under the guise of neutrality as removing the state from certain classes of debate and contestation. It may have an ethical underpinning or be a way of dealing with intractable contestations. Rules regulating parliamentary or electoral procedures, such as catching the Speaker’s eye and majoritarian ‘winner takes all’ systems, inevitably serve as silencing devices. National commemoration involves a distribution of significance in ranking and acting out silences and in covering up other memories. Some centrally endorsed silences reinforce the singularity of authority. And recently, the right to erase one’s digital history is developing as a claim towards the state.