Silence as Strategy: From Sontag to Barthes in Art and Criticism

Marcello Faletra traces the history of silence in art and criticism, drawing on Susan Sontag's 1967 essay 'The Aesthetics of Silence,' where silence is framed as a strategy for the 'transvaluation of art' against the orgy of signs. Gillo Dorfles links sign hypertrophy to a 'new tribalism' of compulsive consumption, while Giordano Bruno's final act—biting off his tongue and spitting it at his executioner—exemplifies political silence imposed by power. Stéphane Mallarmé's poem 'Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard' uses white spaces to disrupt predictability. Alberto Giacometti's minimal set for Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot' (1952)—a leafless tree with few branches—embodies silence in theater. Roland Barthes, in 'Critique et Vérité' (1965), left pages intentionally blank, and after a stay in Japan, contrasted the lightness of clear broth with Western consumptive 'fat.' The essay argues that today's noise is not aesthetic but political and social.