In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

SILENCE VS. NOISE
There is an enthusiasm about Silence that often reaches the passionate
one-dimensionality of an obsession. Noise becomes a frequently evoked
but mostly vague background reference. In view of the tradition of
defining the human species through its capacity to speak, it is astonishing
that this obsession with Silence yields multiple suggestions concerning
the formation and functions of subjecthood. They emerge from an intellectual
and political environment where individual independence and
self-determination are neither seen as generally available options nor
unanimously hailed as positive values. If, in this context, Silence defines
subjecthood, "de-fining" (from Latin finis, "boundary" or "end"), indeed
means "setting limits" to subjecthood. There are two main perspectives
from which the subject is thus defined. Silence can express the awe
with which individuals are obliged (or even forced) to approach-often
in an attitude of self-abnegation-whatever is considered to be categorically
stronger than their own subjectivity. [see Immanence vs. Transcendence]
But Silence can also bespeak self-control and self- containment,
through which subjecthood gives itself a form in permanently distracting
environments.
D. H. Lawrence's novel The Plumed Serpent explores Silence as a
compo- nent of subjecthood that-paradoxically-presupposes subjecterasure.
The heroine, Kate, becomes sexually involved with a man
named Cipriano, a Mexican revolutionary and (the narrator strongly
suggests) a demigod. Through this relationship, Kate acquires the belief
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