Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A Deconstructive Methodology
But is this possible? Of course it is not; that is why it is
the only possible invention of deconstruction.
—Caputo, 1997, p. 115
Silent Excesses
Finally, the last one to whom a specter can appear, address itself, or
pay attention is a spectator as such. At the theater or at school. The
reasons for this are essential. As theoreticians or witnesses, specta-
tors, observers, and intellectuals, scholars believe that looking is suf-
ficient. Therefore, they are not always in the most competent position
to do what is necessary: speak to the specter. Herein lies perhaps,
among so many others, an indelible lesson of Marxism. There is no
longer, there has never been a scholar capable of speaking of any-
thing and everything while addressing himself to everyone and any-
one, and especially to ghosts. There has never been a scholar who
really, and as scholar, deals with ghosts. A traditional scholar does
not believe in ghosts—nor in all that could be called the virtual space
of spectrality. There has never been a scholar who, as such, does not
believe in the sharp distinction between the real and the unreal, the
actual and the inactual, the living and the non-living, being and non-
being (“to be or not to be,” in the conventional reading), in the oppo-
sition between what is present and what is not, for example in the
form of objectivity. (p. 11)
A Play of Silence
and look at how our traditional ways of using the word “play”
might invite Derrida’s form of “play” with the hope of a dan-
gerous “play” of silence.
Play is (or can be) dramatic. A play enacts a tale involving
the portrayal of people, relationships and stories. It functions
through dialogue and breath; words and actions; speech and
silence. Using this notion we treat our discourses as dramas in
which thoughts, feelings, emotions and yes, silences, gasps,
breaths, pauses, blanks, are used by participants to enact
their tales. This attention to play as “enacting” brings those
silences to center stage, gives them import and impels us to
pay attention as we would to actors in those moments we call
“pregnant pauses.”
Play is also about being in the game, and one must be in
the game in order to play. In order to play in the abyss of si-
lence, as researchers we must first be playful—full of play. We
must take seriously (without taking ourselves too seriously) the
play of speech, the frolic of the specters that haunt the words
and play-fully tease us to pay attention. Silence is the condi-
tion of irruption—that instant when we are open to laughter (in
all seriousness) and free to hear outside our hearing.
Play is also a strategic move, a carefully designed action or
coordinated series of actions with the goal of advancement,
scoring, or defending a goal (serious play?). But in order to
confuse the “opposition” one must use the element of surprise.
(What could be more playful?) Strategy as play or play as strat-
egy will destabilize our received notion of what “counts” in data
collection so that the silences might break through the defense
of our hearing and reveal something previously unthought. (In-
teresting that the opposition in this game is not just an “oppo-
nent” in a game-playing sense, but is our own reticence to
romp with the specters. No wonder we need to play!)
It must be clear by now that if we are to hear silence, we
must encourage silence to play and we must play in silence.
Or, said another way, we must put silence into play. The sift-
ing we as researchers employ in our analysis of “speech” and
“text” will no longer permit a tossing out of those large chunks
of silence that we at one time might have considered to be of
little value if in fact we were to have noticed them at all. Using
a deconstructive methodology, silence must now be allowed to
24 Inhabited Silence in Qualitative Research
Silence as Différance