The Silent Communication

Abstract

The essay discloses dimensions of communicative awareness, which are both local and general in the sense that they are recognised in all civilisations and pervade the researches of anthropologists, archeologists and historians. These dimensions are bodily activities composed of six practical orientations: up-down, left-right and forward-backward. Our social architecture, our systems of practical implements, our spaces and times of orientations are inscribed by both, the specific bodily situations and their silent background in all communicative awareness. Even languages are variations on these silent dimensions of activities: we face the future – a forward orientation; we leave the past behind – pertaining to our backward dimension; there are upper and lower social classes, left and right political movements. These silent dimensions are both universal and contingent.