In this thesis, I examine silence as a relationally constituted social and discursive phenomenon that cannot be understood simply as quietness or the absence of speech. Rather, silence should be approached as an effect of power structures that organize the conditions under which individuals are able to speak, while simultaneously shaping the distribution of symbolic capital and the regimes of audibility that determine whose voices are recognized and valued. The theoretical framework combines Bourdieu’s conceptualization of the linguistic market and symbolic violence, Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, and Spivak’s analysis of subalternity and epistemic violence. It is further complemented by contemporary poststructuralist and feminist approaches (hooks, Butler, Ahmed), which situate silence within the fields of relationality, affect, and performativity. The central research question concerns the production of silence at the intersection of discursive, institutional, and affective structures, as well as its effects on processes of subject formation. Silence emerges here as a multifaceted phenomenon. On the one hand, it may reflect exclusion from dominant social discourses; on the other, it may represent a conscious distancing from those very structures. Its critical potential is not inherent or guaranteed, but depends on the degree of individual autonomy and the capacity to reflect upon one’s own position within social relations. The methodological approach is based on a hermeneutic and discursive analysis of the myth of Echo and Narcissus from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which serves as a paradigmatic textual corpus for examining the relationships between speech, embodiment, desire, and the ontology of the subject. The myth provides insight into how restrictions on speech manifest not merely as a reduction of communication, but as a transformation of the very conditions of subjective existence. Findings suggest that silence operates as a material-discursive and affective-spatial effect that is constituted through the sedimentation of power relations and subsequently stabilized within interpretative regimes of meaning. Its function is therefore not unambiguous. Silence may contribute to the reproduction of domination, but it may also hold the potential to destabilize dominant discursive norms. In both cases, however, it remains embedded within asymmetrical structures of representation and interpretative authority.
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