Silence

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani approaches silence from two angles. The first is musical and poetic. Speaking of Debussy, he argues that the music resounds in order to make the extent of silence felt, and that mystery, like the sphinx, reigns through silence1. In the cycle devoted to Mignon, he describes a text that stays in the background, invisible and silent, which condenses what the texts under study have in common: a barycentre where all the sound emissions cross2. The heart of the sonic thing would thus be a certain silence, which he acknowledges is hard to characterise3. The second angle is political and concerns the media. He is less interested in how monstrous the facts are than in the fact that they are kept quiet, as with the indifference towards the dead of the Sahel4 or the silence covering a chief of staff's statement about a high-intensity conflict5. Later he adds that media noise does not contradict silence, since one noise can mask another6.

1. 1Debussy27 Mar 2020 · 22:43
2. 2#1 Mignon ou le chant du silence7 Apr 2021 · 1:10
3. 3#1 Mignon ou le chant du silence7 Apr 2021 · 46:09
4. 410#6 Guerre et Paix : "Les pulsions de mort progressent en silence..." (Freud)8 Dec 2021 · 30:49
5. 510#6 Guerre et Paix : "Les pulsions de mort progressent en silence..." (Freud)8 Dec 2021 · 1:13:08
6. 6Les silences du vacarme médiatique - nouveau cycle : la renazification atlantiste.21 Oct 2025 · 49:42

Summary produced automatically from 6 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.