“Silences shape all speech.” Silence provides time to reflect and understand all the thoughts, information, and knowledge we consume on a day to day basis. Machery helps us to understand that the silence serves to aid the spoken, by designating the spoken and clarifying it. The first time I read through this portion of the book, I found the way the author wrote the piece to be confusing and difficult to understand. By taking time with each sentence; each word, it became easier to get a grasp of what Machery was saying.
Even the way that some sentences in the chapter are written seems to convey that one should pause before continuing. “This moment of absence founds the speech of the work. Silences shape all speech. Banality?” Here Machery himself offers an utterance, followed by a question. The utterance is the same as the sound that De Sassure discussed in our earlier reading. The sound/utterance is the signifier, and the question or meaning that we take from that utterance is the signified. It certainly helps to add silence in order to process the signifier and the signified. Machery seems to say that without the silence, it would be impossible to determine the signifier from the signified.
The silence is what speaks to us, tells us how we feel about ideas and emotions. Without the silence, speech would be useless because it would exist as information without a method to understand and take meaning from it.
While I do not understand this chapter and am still lost as to the meaning of the whole thing, I think I understand Machery’s point. Silence and speech cannot exist without one another, and use each other as a function to create meaning with emotion behind it. “Silence reveals speech – unless it is speech that reveals the silence.”
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
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1 comment:
You take a good approach to deconstruction each word and sentence to find clarity in the reading. Though you don't think you do, you do in fact have a good understanding of his main theory of how sound and silence are inter-related. Think of ways that this relates to other aspects of the world outside the classroom. Also, class tomorrow morning will help you understand it more.
Smiley Face :)
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