Post-class: Macherey

Macherey says that "the speech stored in the book must be incomplete; because it has not said everything, there remains the possibility of saying something else" (15). I took this quote as meaning that everyone has a choice as to what they say, what they don't say, and how they say it. Because of these choices, our words (or lack of words) can have a much deeper meaning. Macherey extends on this by saying, "Speech eventually has nothing more to tell us: we investigate the silence, for it is the silence that is doing the speaking" (17).

As authors, we may or may not realize the implications our readers are gathering by our unspoken words. In my mind, I connect this idea with white lies. A white lie is a small fib that you tell someone in order to not hurt their feelings. For example, when a woman asks her husband or boyfriend if what she's wearing makes her look fat, the man replies with, "Of course not, you look great in anything." What the man said was not truthful, but by not stating the truth (that she actually does look fat), the man is saying, without words, that he cares for her and doesn't want to hurt her feelings by telling her the truth. Another example of silence working to formulate meaning would be if this woman tells her partner that she loves him. The man pauses before answering, answering, "I love you, too." The woman might take this hesitation as a sign that he really doesn't love her. The woman might wonder about the meaning of this unspoken pause again and again until it becomes an argument between them. Therefore, when the spoken word ceases, the unspoken word takes over; they both work together to form the author's meaning.