ABSTRACT
Silence, including strategic silence, is not abstract. The practice of signification – including talking and writing – produces silence not in isolation but in dialectics with what is not silence. Silence and non-silence mutually determine one another, and their concrete play constitutes unique variations in strategic communication. Should we try to pin down a singular silence – like a butterfly in a herbarium? – it will fall apart and disappear without a trace. This is another reason why PR is silent on its silences. It is actually not, but every attempt to speak about it in an abstract, isolated and individualist way leaves its theory empty-handed as the empirical silences slip through its fingers.
