Abstract

And what if we also learn to listen for silence?This article is one in a series of attempts on my part to think the inbetween of traditionally juxtaposed claims of voice versus silence. It takes seriously both claims that voice is lived as liberatory by many, on the one hand, and that words may be inadequate to bear witness to the humiliation, pain, and systematic degradation of trauma and violence, on the other. Thus situated, I turn to silence to locate resources for the renewal of sense. Specifically, I propose that the mobilization of silences can be a powerful decolonizing praxis. Attending to Gloria Anzaldúa's iterations of the myth of la Llorona in "My Black Angelos" and Prietita and the Ghost Woman,1...