The State of Cypriot Silences

Abstract

This paper argues that rather than disappearing, Cypriot silences about inconvenient histories have in fact become ‘louder’ since the 2003 opening of the checkpoints. The paper uses Derrida’s analysis of the border as that which can but should not be crossed to explore the new silences that emerged in Cypriots’ encounters with each other and with the past in the wake of the ‘opening’. That opening, the paper attempts to show, not only transformed the unrecognised ‘border’ (Green Line, ceasefire line) into something more closely resembling a border through the problematic act of crossing, but it also made the Cyprus Problem increasingly aporetic, a space that cannot be crossed even when there is no ‘border’. Denial arises in this space where the ‘border’ disappears, making crossing a non-passage even in the era of an open border.