PetiteEtoile, Macherey

When I first began reading this I read the first page and thought, “now...what did I just read?” and I could not answer the question for myself. My first reaction was to become angry at how ridiculously worded this assignment was, but then I slowed down and read each sentence as if it were a puzzle to uncover. Then I started to make sense of it, or at least I think I did, so this is what I think all of that ridiculousness means. I could be terribly off.. but here goes. One should listen to what people do, not what they say. Not necessarily because we are assuming that all people are liears, although some are, but because because don't truly know themselves what they believe. Some people are so convinced they believe something even though they really dont. Such as a man who claims he is not racist, but perhaps deep in his subconscious he feels he is better than other races. Also, a subject can never really be fully explained. There will always be something missing or something left unsaid. And because of these gaps in what has been said there is always room for criticism. Criticism explicates things, it unfolds them, examines them, explains them better. So criticism is an important part of what is being said because it makes it more clear to understand what had been said. The explicit is something that has been discovered, is accounted for, is understood. The implicit is the undiscovered and the unexplained. So in order for a book to fully tell it's story, it needs the accompanying criticism. We cannot just allow the writer to speak, or simply read the book, in order to fully understand what they are saying. We must already have a general knowledge about what the writer is talking about.
In order to say anything there are some things that must be left unsaid. That is, in order to make speech important, we must choose things to not say. Freud name these unspoken words which “frame” the spoken words as the unconscious. Therefore the foundation for all speech is silence. Silence assigns speech its exact position and where it can go and where it cannot go. But does silence reveal speech? Or does speech reveal silence? It is not that either the implicit or the explicit has meaning, but it is the relationship between the two of them that was meaning. There is also a large difference between what speech doesn't say and what it cannot say and what it refuses to say. Each implication greatly changes the meaning of the speech. But the main question is can we study this and figure out which is which? When someone shows us something we ask, what are they hiding by showing us this/ What are they trying to distract us from? What emotions are they attempting to rile up? These type of questions are insiduous questions because we think them but do not speak them,