Signal, Silence and Noise

Posted by admin on August 30th, 2007 filed in theory

Blah-Feme (BF) has returned from the allotment with two noisy posts (here and here). There are a couple of points I’d like to pick up on as they come close to some of my own interests. As I know almost nothing of Marx I’m just going to ignore those bits for now. I would like to spend a little more time with this but I really must get packing as I leave for France tomorrow. Below are some initial thoughts and reactions that are mostly concerned with the first of the two articles linked above.

In a very real sense silence has always been a very noisy matter.

What I find interesting about this passage is the confusion of noise and silence, as well as the acknowledged impossibility of the latter in the face of the former (or the other). The assertion of both silence and noise relies upon a certain degree of violence: the chaotic force of noise and that of forced silence. Silence (an impossibility, a noisy matter) is that which does not register, or rather it cannot be allowed to register, it must remain stuck in the throat, it resounds elsewhere. This impossible silence can also be said to mark out the perimeter of agency amongst noise, the cut which delimits a porous interiority that distinguishes between the subject and the field. This silence is not agency itself but the creation of a space from which it might emerge.

The confusion of these two key terms (noise and silence) identifies that which is not sound, that which is anti-sound or anti-signal. What of the positive counterpart to these terms? BF briefly considers the status of signal ⎯ the identification of ’sound as the positive and fascinating counterpart, the nemesis of the beguiling and apocryphal seduction of silence’ ⎯ in relation to Cagean (impossible) silence. I would like to spend a little more time with this, but seems that the specific signal content which BF’s article points towards, via Žižekian u-turn, is a voicing of a ‘firm and unadulterated acceptance of… instrumentalisation’.

I have had to keep this brief and just hope it is in some way coherent. I suggest reading the article if you want to make any sense of this, especially the last quote which would require more time than I have to go into in any detail.