ABSTRACT
The cultural relations that human beings have maintained across time are not governed by continuous fluxes of communication, but by disassociated interruptions of silences. In these verbal silences destined to either give the floor to someone else or serve as an internal break for contemplative thought, other types of coercively induced silences of great caliber are encountered. At any attempt of imposing a different point of view to others, words become threatened by a number of dangers. Even in the etymological origins of the Latin term silentium, derived from silere (suspension of speech), a type of transitive shape appears, equal to remaining silent, meaning an act that can be motivated by an exterior will (Corominas 1987, 535). In this entry special attention will be given to the political dimensions of silencing. Thomas Hobbes, in his Leviathan (1651) appears to stand in the horizon of political silencing as a benchmark based on Occidental culture. From a materialistic perspective, he laid down the basis that gave substance to the government’s social confiscatory doctrines. He assumed that each subject, just by being a part of the communal assemblies, must be subjected to the decrees appointed by the sovereign. Otherwise, “he must either submit to their decrees or be left in the condition of war he was in before” (Hobbes 1651, 109). For Hobbes, the tacit pact of obedience forces the subjects to submit themselves without protest, since the instituted sovereign has every right to exercise repression when he deems it necessary. As such, his coercive acts are not considered unfair or abusive. A discord which is legitimized from this vicious circle can already be seen since Hobbes assumes that, in the virtue of belonging to a governed community, the subjects have joint responsibility for the decisions taken by the sovereign. This maneuver covered up all kinds of abuses, since de facto, common people were forced to live under perpetual threats; confined to very narrow margins of individual freedom (→ I/27).
