The materiality of silence: Assembling the absence of sound and the memory of 9/11

This chapter describes a battle between sound and silence, fought among a gathering of bodies. The idea that sound constitutes a particular form of materiality is becoming a common claim in much critical literature. The characteristic means according to which ‘material culture’ has been classically understood within anthropology is as a realm of dead, fossilized objects; a counterpart to the lively, dynamic human subject. Silence’s materiality derives from its assembled nature. If anthropological work has conventionally considered silence as a problem to be overcome, as denoting a lack of meaningful social life, then what Cage’s work and the tenth anniversary ceremony commemorating 9/11 show is its intensely social nature. The moment of silence observed at Ground Zero on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 possessed an affective, moving nature unavailable to any performance of 4’33” as it was an entirely different thing, composed of different elements and possessing entirely different properties.