Cultures of Silence: The Power of Untold Narratives

This book investigates the notion of silence as both an oppressing instrument and a powerful tool of resistance under the lenses and practices of cultural production.

Taking a transdisciplinary and transcultural approach to the study of creative and cultural practices, the chapters ask how cultural production is dealing with surges of oppressive regimes, censorship, and fake news, and which cultural processes are implied in silencing as well in giving voice to, in erasing, and in producing small and grand narratives. The book reaches beyond dominant instrumental views of contemporary cultural practice to understand culture not only as an expedient to conduct social policy but also as a diagnostic tool and a vernacular space of giving voice to the many small narratives that make the world we live in.

Offering an introduction to an underrepresented area of cultural studies, this truly interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to scholars of cultural studies, cultural history, media studies, politics, visual studies, communication studies, history, and literature.

Luísa Santos holds aPhD in Culture Studies from the Humboldt & Viadrina School of Governance, in Berlin, Germany and an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, in London, UK. She is Assistant Researcher and Assistant Professor in Culture Studies/Artistic Studies at the CECC (Research Centre for Communication and Culture), Faculty of Human Sciences, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Portugal, having been granted a Gulbenkian Professorship between 2016 and 2019. Having authored various publications in the domains of art and society, Luísa Santos sits on the editorial and scientific boards of the peer-reviewed magazines Estúdio, Gama, and Croma, and of the Yearbook of Moving Image Studies (YoMIS - Research Group Moving Image Kiel), Büchner-Verlag. Since 2018, she has been the co-artistic director of the nanogaleria, an independent curatorial project which she co-founded with Ana Fabíola Maurício.