Not Dead Yet: Rescuing the Silent Voice of May Young in Ali Smith’s There but for the

In line with the rest of Ali Smith’s fiction, There but for the intimately binds the aesthetic and the political, as shown in particular by its imaginative articulation of what gets to be spoken or written and what does not. Silence and invisibility form the core of the novel, as its main event cons...

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Autor principal:	Pascale Tollance
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN FR
Publicado:	Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2021
Materias:	Ali Smith There but for the silence voice infancy Arts in general NX1-820 English language PE1-3729 English literature PR1-9680
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/6dd38fa60e864d1c89234118355cc7aa
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id	oai:doaj.org-article:6dd38fa60e864d1c89234118355cc7aa
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:6dd38fa60e864d1c89234118355cc7aa2021-12-02T10:51:50ZNot Dead Yet: Rescuing the Silent Voice of May Young in Ali Smith’s There but for the1168-49172271-544410.4000/ebc.11548https://doaj.org/article/6dd38fa60e864d1c89234118355cc7aa2021-11-01T00:00:00Zhttp://journals.openedition.org/ebc/11548https://doaj.org/toc/1168-4917https://doaj.org/toc/2271-5444In line with the rest of Ali Smith’s fiction, There but for the intimately binds the aesthetic and the political, as shown in particular by its imaginative articulation of what gets to be spoken or written and what does not. Silence and invisibility form the core of the novel, as its main event consists in the puzzling behaviour of a man who disappears during a dinner party and locks himself up for months inside the guestroom of his hosts. His silence is matched by that of May Young, an old lady who lives between the four walls of a hospital and only speaks ‘within the confines of her head’. The question of why May Young’s voice matters and how it matters in the general economy of the novel is one way of approaching the central riddle of the book. May’s story seems to result from one main imperative: to rescue from silence a life made invisible. While the old lady may be considered by some as good as dead, her lively monologue proves rather the opposite. But while it rescues a voice from silence, the novel also rescues its silence—a silence which stands in sharp contrast with the loud vacuous dinner conversation during which Miles, the mystery man, absconds. May’s mute resistance, like Miles’s disappearance, bores a hole into the fabric of social so-called exchange, small talk riddled with deadly clichés. Silence becomes a productive force that compels us to listen rather than talk. Challenging the received notion of a ‘second childhood’, May’s monologue invites us to reflect instead on the value of ‘in-fancy’ and what Jean-François Lyotard calls our ‘debt to infancy’. May’s silent voice can be the name for an idiom that manages to weave together the spoken and the unspoken and to resist both the threat (or temptation) of absolute silence and the deafness of self-sufficient discourse.Pascale TollancePresses Universitaires de la MéditerranéearticleAli SmithThere but for thesilencevoiceinfancyArts in generalNX1-820English languagePE1-3729English literaturePR1-9680ENFRÉtudes Britanniques Contemporaines, Vol 61 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN FR
topic	Ali Smith There but for the silence voice infancy Arts in general NX1-820 English language PE1-3729 English literature PR1-9680
spellingShingle	Ali Smith There but for the silence voice infancy Arts in general NX1-820 English language PE1-3729 English literature PR1-9680 Pascale Tollance Not Dead Yet: Rescuing the Silent Voice of May Young in Ali Smith’s There but for the
description	In line with the rest of Ali Smith’s fiction, There but for the intimately binds the aesthetic and the political, as shown in particular by its imaginative articulation of what gets to be spoken or written and what does not. Silence and invisibility form the core of the novel, as its main event consists in the puzzling behaviour of a man who disappears during a dinner party and locks himself up for months inside the guestroom of his hosts. His silence is matched by that of May Young, an old lady who lives between the four walls of a hospital and only speaks ‘within the confines of her head’. The question of why May Young’s voice matters and how it matters in the general economy of the novel is one way of approaching the central riddle of the book. May’s story seems to result from one main imperative: to rescue from silence a life made invisible. While the old lady may be considered by some as good as dead, her lively monologue proves rather the opposite. But while it rescues a voice from silence, the novel also rescues its silence—a silence which stands in sharp contrast with the loud vacuous dinner conversation during which Miles, the mystery man, absconds. May’s mute resistance, like Miles’s disappearance, bores a hole into the fabric of social so-called exchange, small talk riddled with deadly clichés. Silence becomes a productive force that compels us to listen rather than talk. Challenging the received notion of a ‘second childhood’, May’s monologue invites us to reflect instead on the value of ‘in-fancy’ and what Jean-François Lyotard calls our ‘debt to infancy’. May’s silent voice can be the name for an idiom that manages to weave together the spoken and the unspoken and to resist both the threat (or temptation) of absolute silence and the deafness of self-sufficient discourse.
format	article
author	Pascale Tollance
author_facet	Pascale Tollance
author_sort	Pascale Tollance
title	Not Dead Yet: Rescuing the Silent Voice of May Young in Ali Smith’s There but for the
title_short	Not Dead Yet: Rescuing the Silent Voice of May Young in Ali Smith’s There but for the
title_full	Not Dead Yet: Rescuing the Silent Voice of May Young in Ali Smith’s There but for the
title_fullStr	Not Dead Yet: Rescuing the Silent Voice of May Young in Ali Smith’s There but for the
title_full_unstemmed	Not Dead Yet: Rescuing the Silent Voice of May Young in Ali Smith’s There but for the
title_sort	not dead yet: rescuing the silent voice of may young in ali smith’s there but for the
publisher	Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/6dd38fa60e864d1c89234118355cc7aa
work_keys_str_mv	AT pascaletollance notdeadyetrescuingthesilentvoiceofmayyounginalismithstherebutforthe
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Not Dead Yet: Rescuing the Silent Voice of May Young in Ali Smith’s There but for the

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