ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to offer some reflections on silence and its essential place in the constellation of remembering and forgetting. Here is a subject embedded in the very centre of the avalanche of literature produced in recent years in this field, but with some notable exceptions, it has not been approached systematically. I want to try to do so by using the language of J.L. Austin, and adding to his repertoire the category of performative non-speech acts, which I believe are always present in commemorative practices, and in most other narrative forms as well. Silence is the hidden partner in our work as scholars of our violent times, and my intention is to invite silence into our discussions of aftermaths, since whether we admit it or not, silence defines the way we live our lives.
