The Authors of Silence: My Ethics of Cyborgian Care, Lacan’s Four Discourses, and the Silence of History
The Authors of Silence is a collaborative exploration of historical and systemic silences, co-authored by a human (me) and AI. This play interrogates the complexities of authorship, legacy, memory, and violence through a unique lens, engaging with the intersections of ethics, psychoanalysis, and narrative craft.
Grounded in Lacan’s four discourses—Master, University, Hysteric, and Analyst—and my ethics of cyborgian care, the play pushes the boundaries of Digital Humanities (DH). These discourses, as detailed in my blog post "The Narrative Arts and Lacan's Four Discourses," serve as the structural and thematic backbone of the play, offering distinct frameworks through which to examine power, subjectivity, and narrative.
Lacan’s Four Discourses and the Narrative Framework
Lacan’s four discourses—the Master, University, Hysteric, and Analyst—are modes of structuring human relationships, knowledge, and power dynamics. Each discourse illuminates different aspects of how language, authority, and desire shape our lives and histories. In The Authors of Silence, these discourses operate not only as a narrative framework but also as a way of challenging systemic silences and interrogating ethical authorship.
The Master’s Discourse revolves around authority and control. It asserts power through silencing and simplification, erasing contradictions to maintain dominance. Jefferson’s role as the "Author of Liberty" exemplifies this discourse. His rhetoric of equality and freedom masks the systemic violence he perpetuated, enforcing a historical silence around figures like Sally Hemings.
The University’s Discourse concerns the institutionalization of knowledge. It preserves and disseminates narratives that often reflect the biases of those in power. In Act II, the cultural archive represents this discourse, showcasing how systems of knowledge perpetuate silences by curating history to exclude marginalized voices.
The Hysteric’s Discourse disrupts the established order by questioning and revealing the gaps within dominant narratives. Sally Hemings embodies this discourse when she directly challenges Jefferson’s rationalizations and forces him to confront the contradictions between his ideals and actions. Her voice destabilizes the silences Jefferson and history have maintained.
The Analyst’s Discourse seeks transformation by confronting repressed truths. It encourages reflection, accountability, and the possibility of repair. Act III is structured around this discourse, as Sally assumes the role of analyst to interrogate Jefferson and the systems of power that authored systemic violence.
These discourses interact dynamically throughout the play, reflecting the complexities of confronting historical and systemic erasures. They also resonate with the ethics of cyborgian care, which align with the Analyst’s Discourse in prioritizing deliberate, reflective engagement with systems of power to foster repair and justice.
The Ethics of Cyborgian Care
The ethics of cyborgian care challenge traditional hierarchies of knowledge and authorship by emphasizing collaboration, reflection, and the amplification of marginalized voices. Drawing from my blog post on this topic, cyborgian care rejects the notion of neutrality in technology and authorship. Instead, it foregrounds the biases embedded in AI and historical narratives, highlighting the need for ethical accountability.
Bias and Complicity: AI systems, like human authors, are shaped by the ideologies of their creators. They inherit systemic biases that perpetuate silences and exclusions. Cyborgian care demands that we confront these biases head-on, ensuring that AI serves as a tool for amplifying voices that have been historically silenced.
Reparative Collaboration: Collaboration between human and AI authors must be rooted in a commitment to repair. This involves not only uncovering and amplifying silenced voices but also addressing the harm caused by past exclusions. In The Authors of Silence, the AI’s role as co-author is not neutral; it is critically examined and shaped by an ethics of care.
Foregrounding the Marginalized: The ethics of cyborgian care center the voices of those who have been erased or distorted by dominant narratives. Sally Hemings’ presence in the play exemplifies this principle. Her voice disrupts Jefferson’s legacy and demands a reckoning with the systemic violence that shaped her life.
Imperfect and Ongoing Work: Cyborgian care acknowledges that ethical authorship is an ongoing process. It recognizes the cracks and imperfections in any narrative project, viewing them not as failures but as opportunities for continued reflection and growth. As Sally states in the play’s epilogue, “The cracks… are where the light comes through.”
This ethical framework underpins the play’s exploration of authorship, complicity, and repair, providing a model for engaging with historical and systemic silences in the Digital Humanities.
Act I: The Weight of Silence
Primary Discourse: The Discourse of the Master
Act I operates under the discourse of the Master, where Jefferson’s initial confidence as the "Author of Liberty" is dismantled through a series of confrontations with his own legacy. This discourse prioritizes authority and control, which Jefferson embodies through his appeals to power, societal norms, and historical necessity. Freud, a guide rather than a judge, provokes Jefferson to confront his silences and the systemic violences he upheld. Sally Hemings’ shadow looms throughout the act, haunting Jefferson with the truths he silenced.
Ethics of Cyborgian Care
This act reveals how unexamined authority perpetuates violence. AI’s initial drafts often oversimplified Jefferson’s character into a caricature of hypocrisy, reflecting societal tendencies to flatten historical figures into binaries. Students should interrogate how AI’s biases—shaped by dominant ideologies—reflect the Master’s discourse, often prioritizing control over complexity. The ethics of cyborgian care demand that AI’s role as a collaborator be critically examined, ensuring it amplifies marginalized voices rather than reinforcing dominant narratives.
Scene Analysis
The Threshold: Jefferson enters a surreal consulting room where Freud confronts him with the silences of his past, laying the groundwork for the themes of repression and legacy.
The Shadow of Trauma: Freud probes Jefferson’s formative years, drawing parallels between his grief and fear at fourteen and his later exploitation of Sally Hemings, who was the same age when he first took her.
The Tyranny of Silence: Jefferson’s rationalizations unravel as Freud links his silences to systemic violence, culminating in Sally’s appearance to confront him directly.
Workshopping Suggestions
Jefferson’s Complexity: Encourage actors to explore moments of vulnerability and defensiveness, deepening the audience’s understanding of his contradictions.
Sally’s Presence: Use lighting and sound to emphasize Sally’s emergence as a powerful counterforce to Jefferson’s narrative, ensuring her voice dominates key moments.
Freud as a Guide: Highlight Freud’s role as an analytic figure, neither judge nor savior, but one who exposes the silences that shaped Jefferson’s psyche and legacy.
Act II: The Disease of the Soul
Primary Discourse: The Discourse of the University
In Act II, the discourse of the University shifts the focus from Jefferson’s personal reckoning to systemic violence. Freud and Sally guide Jefferson through a journey into the cultural archive, exposing how systemic silences perpetuate oppression. Jefferson confronts the disease of the American soul, as the archive reveals the lingering impact of slavery, genocide, and systemic racism.
Ethics of Cyborgian Care
The archive serves as a metaphor for the cultural unconscious, where silences are curated by those in power. AI often struggled to capture the complexity of these systemic issues, reflecting institutional tendencies to sanitize historical trauma. Students should explore how AI’s biases perpetuate these silences and examine ways to rewrite the archive through a lens of care and justice.
Scene Analysis
The Historical Disease: Jefferson encounters Sally as a child and confronts the realities of his exploitation. Freud contextualizes Jefferson’s choices within the broader patterns of systemic violence.
The American Disease: The archive shifts to scenes of the Trail of Tears, Civil War, and Civil Rights movements, drawing connections between Jefferson’s silences and contemporary injustices.
The Revelation of Archive Fever: Jefferson’s form begins to glitch as the archive exposes the contradictions and silences that shaped his legacy. Sally and Freud challenge him to confront the fever of the archive.
Workshopping Suggestions
Archive Visuals: Use projections to create a visceral, immersive representation of the cultural archive, juxtaposing historical silences with their contemporary echoes.
Sally’s Power: Ensure Sally’s voice drives the narrative, particularly in scenes where she directly confronts Jefferson’s rationalizations.
Jefferson’s Fragmentation: Highlight Jefferson’s physical and emotional unraveling as he grapples with the systemic implications of his silences.
Act III: Archive Fever
Primary Discourse: The Discourse of the Analyst
Act III brings Jefferson to a moment of reckoning, where Sally takes the analyst’s chair and interrogates the systems of power that perpetuate silence and violence. Jefferson’s legacy is dismantled, and the audience is called to confront their complicity in maintaining systemic silences. The archive itself becomes a battleground, with Sally and Freud insisting on the need for accountability and transformation.
Ethics of Cyborgian Care
AI’s role in shaping the archive underscores the myth of neutrality. Students should examine how AI systems both reflect and perpetuate systemic biases and explore ways to use AI ethically to amplify silenced voices.
Scene Analysis
The Cultural Archive: Sally and Freud lead Jefferson through a surreal, collapsing archive, exposing the distortions and omissions that sustain systemic power.
The Fever of the Archive: The archive resists rewriting, revealing the forces that cling to silences to maintain dominance. Sally’s final confrontation with Jefferson encapsulates the stakes of breaking these silences.
The Final Reckoning: Sally and Freud address the audience directly, challenging them to confront their role in perpetuating or dismantling systemic silences.
Workshopping Suggestions
Staging the Archive: Use lighting, sound, and movement to embody the archive’s dual nature as both a repository of memory and a site of power.
Audience Engagement: Incorporate moments where the audience is drawn into the narrative, emphasizing their complicity and agency in rewriting the archive.
Sally’s Resolution: Ensure Sally’s final words resonate as both an indictment of Jefferson’s legacy and a call to action for the audience.
Conclusion: Toward an Ethics of Narrative Authorship
The Authors of Silence critiques not only historical figures like Jefferson but also modern authors, institutions, and AI systems that perpetuate silences. It asks us to consider the legacy of narratives that obscure more than they reveal and to confront the cost of these silences on individuals and society. As articulated in my blog post "Introduction to The Authors of Silence," this work is a reckoning with how systemic erasures shape our understanding of history and power.
By integrating Lacan’s four discourses, the play interrogates the narratives that sustain authority, the knowledge systems that normalize oppression, the voices that disrupt those norms, and the potential for transformation through reflective engagement. These discourses provide a lens through which to analyze not only Jefferson’s legacy but also the broader cultural archives that shape our understanding of the past.
The ethics of cyborgian care expand this framework by insisting on the importance of collaboration and accountability in narrative creation. This approach challenges authorship as a unilateral act, demanding instead a process of mutual engagement that centers marginalized voices and confronts systemic biases. The Authors of Silence demonstrates that ethical authorship requires ongoing reflection, an acknowledgment of complicity, and a commitment to repair.
Ultimately, the play invites the audience to grapple with their own roles as authors of silence. It asks: How do we contribute to the erasures that shape our cultural memory? What stories have we ignored or distorted? And how can we, as co-authors of history, participate in the rewriting of the archive to create a more just and inclusive narrative? These questions underscore the urgency of confronting the silences that persist in our collective consciousness, not only for the sake of understanding the past but also for shaping a more equitable future.
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