SUMMER SCHOOL 2022
»TACET AD LIBITUM! TOWARDS A POETICS AND
POLITICS OF SILENCE«
WWU MÜNSTER
GRADUATE SCHOOL PRACTICES OF LITERATURE
24-29 JULY 2022

Silence (tacere or Schweigen) has been considered by Franz Rosenzweig among others as a subversive act or defiant stance of the tragic hero against overwhelming power mechanisms of necessity, i.e., totalization and universality. It has also, however, been regarded as an epiphenomenon (or a result) of marginalization and oppression by postcolonial theorists.

The latters’ understanding marks silence as an end, a potential violent effect of the logics of exclusion and marginalization by “signifying machines”. The former understanding marks silence as a means of rendering mechanisms of powers inoperative. Therefore, the significance of silence appears to oscillate within an aporia of means and ends, singularity and universality, a-thesiology and thesiology, performance and logos.

For the Münster Lectures and Summer School to be mutually complementary, we want to re-explore these known aporias from the perspective of silence as a concept which may occasion an ethics, poetics, and politics of “pure means” or violent ends. Can a logic of silence call for something more than resignation or defiance, complicity or conformity, and if so, how can the notion of silence be expanded into the realm of political action, or into new realms with new voices?

The Summer School will be divided into three sections: Theory, Poetics and Politics. We
do, however, foresee a continuous interaction between the three fields.

The Call for Papers is now closed. We welcome you to register as a regular participant. (Spaces are limited) We are happy to be able to provide more information on our website.