After silence: Reflections on research
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24310/mar.7.2.2026.23654Keywords:
silence, transgressive data, evidence, word, knowledgeAbstract
This minimal story is a reflection on silence. Drawing on artistic and literary references—such as white paintings, John Cage’s 4'33'', and Heinrich Böll’s story Dr. Murke’s Collected Silences—it argues that silence is meaningful. The text reflects on the tendency to privilege speech as the primary means of producing knowledge. Within qualitative research, spoken words have become established as legitimate data and empirical evidence, whereas silences are often excluded from or overlooked in research processes such as transcription and analysis. This raises the question of what counts as “data”. The minimal story proposes considering silence as a form of “transgressive data”. Such a proposal entails a political shift in research: moving away from viewing silence as an error or absence and towards understanding it as a boundary of meaning. It invites us to read the cracks in social narratives, for knowledge resides not only in what is spoken aloud but also in the resonance of what remains unsaid. In doing so, it challenges conventional ways of analysing and interpreting social reality and human experience from an ethical-political standpoint.
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