Narrating Silence in André Brink's <em>The Other Side of Silence</em> (2002): A Performative Analysis

Abstract

In the aftermath of colonization with its psychologically devastating impact on the colonized, narratives of trauma face the difficulty of describing the painful experience of the victimized due to the failure of the human language to depict the sweeping, unutterable feeling of pain experienced. Given this rhetorical incompetence, silence has become a legitimate response to trauma. In the postcolonial context, silence is mainly conceptualized from an ideological perspective as a deliberate tactic by the victim to subvert the techniques of hegemonic discourse. The paper presents a context of colonial violence by Andre Brink's On the Other Side of Silence, reconceptualizing silence as an instrument of empowerment, assertion, and recognition. However, the paper departs from presenting silence as a rhetorical device that can only be studied on semiotic premises. The study rather exploits silence as a mode of representation and a performative tool. The paper foregrounds the performative, nonverbal quality of silence as a more powerful strategy of lending voice to the powerless.