Sgt. Pepper, Macherey

OK, so I think I understood the whole concept Macherey was trying to get across. But then again, I think it seems kind of silly, so maybe I didn't understand it so well. It makes perfect sense that what's written in a piece of writing isn't as it seems. Instead of it being about the words that are written, it is actually about everything which is not written in a writing. That what was, in fact, NOT written gives one more insight as to what it means compared to what is written. Macherey's analogy of explication (a.k.a. criticism) is to implication what explicit is to implicit. He explains that the criticism of a work is the discovered and the implication what is concealed within the work's writing. Another interesting way Macherey explains his theory of Literary Production is by describing that a work is basically all silence. This goes along with the earlier definition that rather than the work being work itself, it is work in the first place because of what it is not. It takes so few words to form a thought, and thoughts are only what they are because of what they're not.

What I thought was silly about his theory is--couldn't you apply that to every single aspect of life? For instance, this sweatshirt I'm wearing is not a sweatshirt because it is a sweatshirt. Rather, it is a sweatshirt because it is none of the elements that does not make up a sweatshirt. Essentially, everything is what it is because it is not what it's not. A more familiar example might be the white. Some debate whether white is really a color at all, and other opinions suggest that white is merely what every color is not. Just thinking more about his theory, I comparing it to example I can try and relate to, but I seem to keep coming up with the same circular reason. Whether we like it or not, I guess, that's how it's going to be.