Description
It takes at least two to play silence. In spite of this inherently constitutive and ambiguous nature of silence, prevailing conceptualizations and readings of the phenomena have focused on discovering the reasons, motivations or intentions mainly of those who are silent. The main purpose behind these endeavors and their ultimate destination has been turning silence into speech. Such an approach prevails in all scholarship and I argue that it needs to change. There is a variety of problematic and potentially harmful consequences that derive especially from speech-centered theories of International Relations which I explore in the first part of this article. In the second part I more specifically elaborate on the (lack of) significance and value of silence for democratic theory and citizenship studies. I argue for prospective benefits of democratic theory and citizenship studies should they shift or broaden up their gaze from silence as meaning towards silence-as-doing. To illustrate this, in the last section I use the case of the referendum on the change of name of Republic of Macedonia to the Republic of North Macedonia held on September 30, 2018. The referendum was declared legally invalid due to a low turnout, but was appropriated as both an expression of democracy and a threat to it by different political actors. The aim of this article is not to elucidate why do certain voters not vote. I instead reach out to those who remain silent through the prism of those who claim to listen in order to see what does the silence of nonvoters do in/to democracy and conceptualizations of citizenship through the different meanings it produced, the interpretations it enabled, the reactions it caused, and the policies it authorized in North Macedonia as a specific case.
