Inhabiting Silence

Francesca Sbardella is an anthropologist and historian of religion and a professor at the University of Bologna. Interested in the contemporary European religious fi eld, she deals with total institutions, magical-religious materiality and musealisation processes. She is the co-director of the Research Center Eidola, Materiality, Cognition and History of Religions.

• ForewordSimon DitchfieldNotes on TextPrologueChapter 1. Relationality of SilenceChapter 2. The Silence of Their GodChapter 3. Alone among the OthersChapter 4. Negated BodiesChapter 5. Subjects’ ObjectificationAfterwordFabio DeiReferencesAppendix: Photographs in Silence, Photographs of Silence by Franco Zecchin

“Francesca Sbardella enters the monasteries on tiptoe, and leads us into the refectory and the bare cells to report the conversations that the nuns weave during their few minutes of recreation. Attentive to the gestures, the rites and the glances that weigh as much or perhaps more than words.” • Libero, Lucia Esposito