Introduction: Silent Reverberations: Potentialities of Attuned Listening

At first sight, “silent reverberations” might suggest a contradiction in terms—a juxtaposition of that which stands for the complete absence of sound with that which implies a prolongation of a sound, a resonance that has a long or continuing effect. As our ethnographic accounts in this collection reveal, however, silences often travel in the modes of prolongation and resonance that the term “reverberation” captures. We show how they do so through practices of affective communication that precede and/or exceed verbal articulation, resonating across time and space through individual and collective experiences of everyday life.