Macherey

I found the Macherey reading to be quite a confusing one because it seemed to me that he was talking in circles without much clarity until the conclusion of the article. The piece that struck out as the most interesting in the whole article was not even Macherey's own words but rather that of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their discussion of the study of ideological phenomenon. The text says 'For Marx and Engels, the study of an ideological phenomenon - that is to say, a conflict at the level of ideology - cannot be isolated from the movement at the economic level; not because it is a different conflict, a different form of teh conflict, but because it is the conflict of this conflict. The composition of an ideology implies the relation of the ideological to the economic' (21). This stood at to me over any of Macherey's work because I have read and studied Marx and Engels in sociology classes and found their works much more articulate, deep and easy to read. This quotation embodies Marx's notion that those who rule the material means of production subsequently own the mental means of production. What is meant by this is that members of the proletariat of society (the highest ups) have the economic power to buy and control the material power of industry and by this exert the most influential power in the formation of public policies leading to ideological control.
To infuse this with Macherey would bring to the forefront his notions of the said and unsaid the implicit and explicit. What Macherey calls the unconscious of the work is all of the ideologies, theses and research done before one that formulate and make up the background information of most writing. The unconscious or implicit of society would then be, in coherence with Marx, the implicit acceptance of the bourgeoisie to their ideological ownership by the proletariat. The explicit in society would the ideologies created and put forth by the proletariat that influence the bourgeoisie implicitly on a daily basis i.e. cultural norms, social norms, hegemonic masculinity, hegemonic femininity, what the 'in' fashions are, who the 'cool' celebrities are, all the way down to food eaten and beverages consumed. What is implicit to the proletariat is the processes of manipulating the bourgeoisie through the agendas of giant corporations such as G.E. These corporations have their own implicit agendas and choose internally what to make explicit and put forth to the general public. The result is the mental and ideological manipulation of contemporary society by a ruling class that remains implicit from the general public. Macherey talks about going beyond the work in an attempt to understand 'what the work is compelled to say in order to say what it wants to say' (22). To use this to read the text of advertisements, advertisers come up with their tag lines first, the line you see at the end of a commercial (i.e. I don't always drink beer but when I do I prefer Dos Equis) and then decide what needs to be said to accomplish that goal. This relies on both the explicit and implicit in what is being said and implied through connotative and denotative readings of the commercialized text. The implicit for beer commercials in their simplest forms would be 'we want you to drink this beer over the others or convert you to this beer from whatever you are drinking'. The explicit would be usually something witty to attract one to the brand and establish a relationship between consumer and commodity based off emotional connectivity to suspend disbelief in the implicit long enough for the brand connection and commodification to take place. The connotative reading would then be for example of Dos Equis 'if I drink this beer I will be the most interesting man in the world' whereas the denotative reading is pretty much just 'this is beer buy it and drink it.'
Although I found Macherey a little confusing and felt he talked in circles when I took his own advice to 'go beyond the work' and used my own silence I found an application of his work to something that interests me and thus made a connection and made sense of his writing. That being said if asked to define the 'two questions' in class tomorrow I will stumble around like the fourth blind mouse.

Cheers.