LISTENING TO SILENCE
Last updated March 2025
This page contains all thesis-related making-as-research and writing. Almost done...let’s goooo!! 🔥️
Playing with Legibility #3 (Nov. 2024)
Silence is often
framed as absence in historical narratives—an omission, an erasure, a void that
needs to be addressed. But silence is not empty. In fact, it shapes how memory
survives in the wake of a decades-long repression.
In the case of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, silence was not just a method of domination; it was also a tool of survival and resistance.
This thesis examines the persistence of these silences in the Martial Law years, arguing that its presence challenges conventional forms of historiography. I explore how the underground movement against the Marcos regime–of which my father was a member–resisted formal structures of documentation. By foregrounding ephemeral, oral, and embodied forms of remembering, I argue that some histories do not belong in books, archives, or institutional records—not because they must be forgotten, but because they were never meant to be contained in such forms. To understand these histories fully, we must rethink not just what is recorded, but how history itself is structured, carried, and preserved.
The silence left behind can be as significant as what is spoken in communities that have endured dictatorial regimes. Silence is complex. It is where power conceals its misdeeds and where shame and regret hide. But for those who listen, silence often reveals as much, if not more, than the words spoken aloud or canonized in history books. Silence is where possibility thrives. In other words, it can be where hope is cultivated.
My master’s thesis examines the silence in the wake of the Marcos dictatorship. From 1965 to 1986 in the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos headed a regime of corruption, media suppression, and widespread human rights violations. For many survivors and their descendants, my parents and myself included, the silence surrounding these deeply painful experiences continues to resonate through our understanding of our past and our present, and our conceptions of the future. Rather than treating silence as an absence, this research treats it as an area of great potential. I discover this through conversations with my father, correspondences with his former comrades in the underground movement, reflections on the ephemera they safeguarded for almost half a century, artistic precedents from those who engage in similar research, and my own making research. I observe concrete ways silence was essential to surviving in a dictatorship and how, even decades removed, it remains a source of hope.
This research began as a frenzied effort to recover the stories lost to state-enforced repression. What do we know? What do we remember? What have we lost? Instead, I found something completely different.
In the case of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, silence was not just a method of domination; it was also a tool of survival and resistance.
This thesis examines the persistence of these silences in the Martial Law years, arguing that its presence challenges conventional forms of historiography. I explore how the underground movement against the Marcos regime–of which my father was a member–resisted formal structures of documentation. By foregrounding ephemeral, oral, and embodied forms of remembering, I argue that some histories do not belong in books, archives, or institutional records—not because they must be forgotten, but because they were never meant to be contained in such forms. To understand these histories fully, we must rethink not just what is recorded, but how history itself is structured, carried, and preserved.
The silence left behind can be as significant as what is spoken in communities that have endured dictatorial regimes. Silence is complex. It is where power conceals its misdeeds and where shame and regret hide. But for those who listen, silence often reveals as much, if not more, than the words spoken aloud or canonized in history books. Silence is where possibility thrives. In other words, it can be where hope is cultivated.
My master’s thesis examines the silence in the wake of the Marcos dictatorship. From 1965 to 1986 in the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos headed a regime of corruption, media suppression, and widespread human rights violations. For many survivors and their descendants, my parents and myself included, the silence surrounding these deeply painful experiences continues to resonate through our understanding of our past and our present, and our conceptions of the future. Rather than treating silence as an absence, this research treats it as an area of great potential. I discover this through conversations with my father, correspondences with his former comrades in the underground movement, reflections on the ephemera they safeguarded for almost half a century, artistic precedents from those who engage in similar research, and my own making research. I observe concrete ways silence was essential to surviving in a dictatorship and how, even decades removed, it remains a source of hope.
This research began as a frenzied effort to recover the stories lost to state-enforced repression. What do we know? What do we remember? What have we lost? Instead, I found something completely different.
What is silence? Is it truly the absence of
sound? Or is it something more?
Silence, I realized, is
never passive. It is a choice–of power, a way to oppress. Who is silent? Who is
silenced? History is scarred by erasure. So many stories have been swallowed
and voices smothered. Survivors are urged to be silent. Whistleblowers are
threatened with being silenced. Yet, this same silence can be wielded for
rebellion.
bell hooks once wrote of a kind of silence that encapsulates this tension. It is where she realized her identity and place in time, pushing back against how she was expected to exist.1 Her struggle is always imbued with the unspoken and what cannot be, or resists being said.
Why do we always assume silence is a vacuum? Have you ever encountered a silence that was thick–like the hush nestled between the last note of a symphony and the eruption of applause? Music is a good way to think about the importance of silence. Without rests, notes tumble around in nothingness, a morass of noise. Silence then is the foundation upon which melody is built and from which we recognize a composition’s meaning.
Similarly, language has power because of silence. Listen to the spaces between words in a great speech–the pauses where the audience holds its breath together carry more hope or grief than actual hope or grief. Perhaps our bodies instinctively understand this absence. Consider the stillness of shock, or the anticipation before a scream. There is so much meaning buried there. When words fail, the body grasps what cannot be said.
That haunting silence lingers in memory. Those silences in history present in obliterated names, untold stories, those blanks where a lineage should be. Those silences heave with loss. A father’s refusal to tell his story might seem like erasure, but it can be an act of care. You are not ready to hear this.
bell hooks once wrote of a kind of silence that encapsulates this tension. It is where she realized her identity and place in time, pushing back against how she was expected to exist.1 Her struggle is always imbued with the unspoken and what cannot be, or resists being said.
Why do we always assume silence is a vacuum? Have you ever encountered a silence that was thick–like the hush nestled between the last note of a symphony and the eruption of applause? Music is a good way to think about the importance of silence. Without rests, notes tumble around in nothingness, a morass of noise. Silence then is the foundation upon which melody is built and from which we recognize a composition’s meaning.
Similarly, language has power because of silence. Listen to the spaces between words in a great speech–the pauses where the audience holds its breath together carry more hope or grief than actual hope or grief. Perhaps our bodies instinctively understand this absence. Consider the stillness of shock, or the anticipation before a scream. There is so much meaning buried there. When words fail, the body grasps what cannot be said.
That haunting silence lingers in memory. Those silences in history present in obliterated names, untold stories, those blanks where a lineage should be. Those silences heave with loss. A father’s refusal to tell his story might seem like erasure, but it can be an act of care. You are not ready to hear this.
1 bell hooks, “CHOOSING THE MARGIN AS A SPACE OF RADICAL OPENNESS,” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, no. 36 (1989): 16.
Graduate Inquiries Exhibition at Pratt Institute (Dec. 2024)
Matanda (Old Man) Puppet (Dec. 2024)
What does history look like?
We assume history is fixed–something documented, recorded, and archived in a way that ensures it endures. The casebound book is the traditional vessel of historical knowledge, designed to be preserved, catalogued, and retrieved at a library.
However, the history of uprisings and revolutions–those of underground movements and resistance networks–do not adhere to convention. I argue that it should not. It exists at the margins, resisting canonization precisely because its power lies in its refusal to be captured.
To commit a history of resistance to a book is to risk transforming it into something legible. The moment something is enshrined in an official record, it is vulnerable to manipulation, co-option, and, ultimately, erasure. Hito Steyerl noted how dominant systems privilege high-resolution, institutionalized histories while disregarding degraded, informal, and alternative forms of knowledge transmission. She describes the ‘poor image’ as a site of resistance: low-quality, pirated, and endlessly circulated, it evades control by existing outside the formal structures of preservation.2
Similarly, the experiences of the Martial Law generation–kept alive through songs, letters, whispered stories, and fragmented recollections–function in a way that defies traditional archiving. The knowledgebase is dispersed, ephemeral, and incomplete, making it impossible to fully contain.
Steyerl’s critique of authority resonates with how memory circulates in resistance movements. The history of my father and his comrades–their fight against the Marcos dictatorship–do not belong in pristine, bound volumes or state-sanctioned museums. The corpus of memory is instead carried in community gatherings, in artwork, in performances, in the silences that punctuate conversations. This is not a failure of documentation; no one dropped the ball. As Saidiya Hartman argued, certain histories cannot be told within the constraints of conventional historical writing.3 These must exist in the gaps, the margins, the interstices between official accounts.
We expect history to be legible–structured, verified, and complete. But this history must resist legibility. It is not meant to be easily consumed. In fact, if they were fully seen and fully understood within the terms dictated by dominant structures, they could be neutralized or appropriated. That this history is unavailable to the wider public is not a shortcoming–it is in many ways a form of protection.
Silence is a form that resists the traditional archive. My father’s silence, and the silence of many who lived through the Marcos years, is not a void but a medium of memory that operates on the margins of documentation. It is an embodied history, carried not in books, but in gestures, relationships, and unspoken knowledge. Why should memory need to be resolved or fully articulated? Sometimes, it must be held in suspension and passed on in shifting forms, which at points could be incomplete.
If my thesis asserts that this history should not be canonized, then it must also critique the assumption that history must conform to specific forms to be valid. This history of the Marcos years thrives in alternative spaces. It is not an accident that these histories do not fit neatly into a book. To demand otherwise is to misunderstand the nature of resistance itself.
However, the history of uprisings and revolutions–those of underground movements and resistance networks–do not adhere to convention. I argue that it should not. It exists at the margins, resisting canonization precisely because its power lies in its refusal to be captured.
To commit a history of resistance to a book is to risk transforming it into something legible. The moment something is enshrined in an official record, it is vulnerable to manipulation, co-option, and, ultimately, erasure. Hito Steyerl noted how dominant systems privilege high-resolution, institutionalized histories while disregarding degraded, informal, and alternative forms of knowledge transmission. She describes the ‘poor image’ as a site of resistance: low-quality, pirated, and endlessly circulated, it evades control by existing outside the formal structures of preservation.2
Similarly, the experiences of the Martial Law generation–kept alive through songs, letters, whispered stories, and fragmented recollections–function in a way that defies traditional archiving. The knowledgebase is dispersed, ephemeral, and incomplete, making it impossible to fully contain.
Steyerl’s critique of authority resonates with how memory circulates in resistance movements. The history of my father and his comrades–their fight against the Marcos dictatorship–do not belong in pristine, bound volumes or state-sanctioned museums. The corpus of memory is instead carried in community gatherings, in artwork, in performances, in the silences that punctuate conversations. This is not a failure of documentation; no one dropped the ball. As Saidiya Hartman argued, certain histories cannot be told within the constraints of conventional historical writing.3 These must exist in the gaps, the margins, the interstices between official accounts.
We expect history to be legible–structured, verified, and complete. But this history must resist legibility. It is not meant to be easily consumed. In fact, if they were fully seen and fully understood within the terms dictated by dominant structures, they could be neutralized or appropriated. That this history is unavailable to the wider public is not a shortcoming–it is in many ways a form of protection.
Silence is a form that resists the traditional archive. My father’s silence, and the silence of many who lived through the Marcos years, is not a void but a medium of memory that operates on the margins of documentation. It is an embodied history, carried not in books, but in gestures, relationships, and unspoken knowledge. Why should memory need to be resolved or fully articulated? Sometimes, it must be held in suspension and passed on in shifting forms, which at points could be incomplete.
If my thesis asserts that this history should not be canonized, then it must also critique the assumption that history must conform to specific forms to be valid. This history of the Marcos years thrives in alternative spaces. It is not an accident that these histories do not fit neatly into a book. To demand otherwise is to misunderstand the nature of resistance itself.
2 Hito Steyerl, “In Defense of the Poor Image,” E-Flux Journal, no. 10 (November 2009): 1, 7–8, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/.
3 Saidiya Hartman, “A Note on Method,” in Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Stories of Social Upheaval (W. W. Norton & Company, 2019).
3 Saidiya Hartman, “A Note on Method,” in Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Stories of Social Upheaval (W. W. Norton & Company, 2019).
History Book (February 2025)