«   

   »   

My double belonging only produces one result: in my own eyes, it taints each of my two discourses with inauthenticity, since each can correspond but to half of who I am; yet I am indeed double. I thus once again confine myself to an oppressive silence (Tzvetan Todorov, "Bilingualism, Dialogism, and Schizophrenia" in New Formations: The Question of 'Home', summer 1992, p 23).

Is there something more compelling in silence, a resistance that stays beyond both time and space, beyond the language of oppression and discourses of capture? Has the Other within the Western Self become more real in emptiness, in silence, and in loss?