Sunday, September 9, 2012

Courtney Sparling - Macherey

I thought I could sum up the reading for class with these two picture:


I must say, although this reading was a few pages long, it took me a while to get through it. I found it difficult to grasp the concept being presented, mostly because of this sentence: "Silence reveals speech - unless it is the speech that reveals the silence." At first I thought, well of course, you have to read in between the lines when dealing with literature, but then how does that work if the speech from the book comes from the silence, where do the "gaps" really exist. 

One line that struck me was:
"For as we quickly come to realise, we can only describe, only remain within the work, if we also decide to go beyond it: to bring it out, for example, what the work is compelled to say in order to say what is wants to say, because not only would the work have wanted not to say it (which is another question), but certainly the work did not want to say it."

To me this says: The reader is in control of interpreting literature. The author may have meant something completely different than what the reader understands and believes the text and the "gaps" are actually saying. As the first question states, "the work originates in a secret to be explained." The author and reader think differently and therefore, for the reader to be successful in grasping the information presented (and not), he or she must go beyond the text. 

I found this passage interesting: "In so far as a conscious intention to realise a project of writing begins inevitably by taking the form of an ideological imperative - something to say (not the acceptance of rules), in other words something that must not be said..." 

The whole basis of literature is writing ideas down on paper that cannot possibly take form on paper. These ideas must then strike a reader from his or her own history and past. The ideas written on paper act as a trigger to uncover what cannot be said. 




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