zone of silence

is at the margins and frontiers of history (i.e. Sorcery and madness) where a historian might 'prowl' to discover the production of difference -not to get to any reality, but as a present-day instrument of distanciation in order to measure deviations.

Apropriating Foucault's turn to discontinuity as a historigraphical desideratum, de Certeau posited that the making of history entails the production of difference. Such histories do not offer the reality of the past, he claimed, but serve as a present-day instrument of distanciation by constructing a discourse about the absent. In his view, history's function is to measure deviations and not just those of the quantitative type with which serial historians work. How do historians locate deviation' By 'prowling' in the margins and on the frontiers, in 'zones of silence' such as sorcery and madness'

zone of silence, n.All

zone of silence