Richard Butsch, Screen Culture: A Global History

Abstract

These are the key questions Melani Schröter’s and Charlotte Taylor’s edited volume addresses. The editors make it clear that their book is not so much focused on the theorisation of silence and absence but rather on proposing different approaches to the empirical analysis of absences: ‘an initial toolkit for anyone who wishes to pursue the study of silence and absence in discourse’ (p. 2). Part 1, ‘Comparison as Means to Identify Silence and Absence’, consists of six chapters comparing: the coverage of refugees in national newspapers with the absence of the topic from parties’ election manifestoes; visual representations of Iran and Pakistan in Time magazine; the absence of the topic about the early Arab Spring uprisings in the British press to the references to them in White House press briefings and CNN coverage; tweets by the Sexual Minorities Uganda network with the absence of sexual minorities’ voices from Ugandan mainstream media; an opinion piece building a straw man argument with a parliamentary debate and the absence of smog reporting during the times of greatest pollution with an increase of reporting when official political announcements are made. Part 2, ‘Exploring Means that Produce Silence and Absence’, focuses on the use of language that leads to absences. It consists of three chapters, exploring the ‘theoretical and methodological challenges in identifying meaningful absences in discourse’ (p. 215), media representations of the environmental refugee and a discourse analysis of absence in Nigerian news media. Part 3, ‘Analysing Surface Indicators of Silence and Absence’, also includes three chapters studying the policing of the unmentionable in the news, the use of no comment by suspects in police interviews and what Dorte Madsen calls ‘the empty signifier “interdisciplinarity” and the representation of absence’ (p. 359). The book offers innovative and thought-provoking perspectives on absence and silence in discourse, but it is regrettable that there is no conclusion in which the editors could have summarised the main contributions of the volume.