Silence as Elective Mutism in Minor Cinema

This article advances mutism as a creative mode and conceptual tool to treat silence in cinema. Whereas mutism can be a productive concept for the study of auditory and visual absence in a broader theoretical framework, my focus here is on the silence of film characters. Drawing on correspondences between the critical and the clinical in Gilles Deleuze’s writing, I argue that adopting mutism as a tool of film-philosophy permits us to supersede traditional film analysis and examine silence not as an interpretive condition at the level of the plot but as a critical-clinical mode of experimentation related to the symptomatology of life. After presenting a brief clinical history of “elective” and “selective” mutism, I then draw on the suppressed understanding of “elective mutism”. I demonstrate that “elective mutism”, which might appear to be a negative and powerless disorder in its clinical presentation, transforms itself into an affirmative and empowering (dis)order that inspires creative experimentation in cinema. In postwar films with mute protagonists, such as Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1960), “elective mutism” engenders a negative mode of existence in its symptomatology, which can be analysed according to the tenets of Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophy of negativity. By contrast, Deleuze’s philosophy of affirmativity and the concept of minor cinema allow for a renewed positive examination of “elective mutism” in more recent films with silent characters, such as Elia Suleiman’s Palestinian quartet (1996; 2002; 2009; 2019). Approaching minor cinema as both a cinema of experimentation and minoritarian cinema, I contend that in films made by minorities mutism becomes more pronouncedly “elective” in an affirmative sense. As a mode of protest and resistance, “elective mutism” is not only a rejection of the present status quo but also an expression of futurity. Finally, I maintain that the concept of “elective mutism” can relate to and stimulate the discussion of many contemporary sociopolitical phenomena.