Happy Birthday! 1/21

I have never doubted my thoughts more in a single reading than I have in this one on the “implicit and explicit” and “two questions”. Statements like, “…for in order to say anything, there are things which must not be said” and “…if the author does not always say what he states, he does not necessarily state what he says” really play tricks on one’s mind. I tried to think of some examples relating to this in my life, and I came up with the petty fights I get into with my sisters. There’s always a silence to what we are feuding over, and each of us hopes that the other will discover that silence, because neither of us wants to reveal it. Then, according to Macherey, “Silence reveals speech”, and he is correct…the silence always comes out when fighting. I think this is a really important and useful tactic used all around me that I had never really noticed. Or maybe I have noticed it, but I never referred to it as silence, I always referred to this notion of leaving out certain information as implying your ideas and thoughts. This is seen today all over our media and Macherey is just going above and beyond and explaining it in a more depth analysis.

I made a slight connection with Macherey’s writing to De Saussure’s writing. Macherey states, “Since it is relative silence which depends on an even more silent margin, it is impossible to dissemble the truth of language.” (19) This is De Saussure’s point he was trying to make when he was writing about language. He says that language is about the otherness and exclusion, and WE are wired to find the differences (just like Macherey points out). De Saussure stresses that our thought process is arbitrary and does not make sense because it is based on language, and language is different to everyone based on their culture and community.

In all this reading was very thorough and brought light to something I had always known…but had never explicitly noticed.