Serendipity, Macherey

One of the most interesting sections to me in the reading for Thursday’s class was the notion of “silence” particularly when Macherey was referring to books. He states that silence gives it life, and it is what you don’t say and that is implicit is more important. In writing a book, there is a coherent belief that there will be a beginning, middle, and an end. No one has to spell that out in the beginning of the book because it is known to be as fact. I would suppose that people would be very disturbed and confused if this was not the case. Also, at the beginning of most novels, the characters are described and we are conditioned to make assumptions about them that carry us throughout the story, even if they do not exhibit behaviors that necessarily point to that assumption. Macherey basically believes that silence has the loudest voice. This belief is heavily portrayed in some of history’s most difficult times. For example, during the Holocaust, rhetoric and words and signs (mostly propaganda) had loud voices and made the atrocities a reality. However, the people in Europe and across the world that were silent really had the biggest impact. If those silent people spoke up and took action against the horrific acts that took place then it would have been stopped earlier, or not have happened at all. The power of voice is not to be undermined, and those that are silent may be inadvertently helping some of the world’s most brutal acts to go unnoticed.