Week 2: Macherey

Pierre Macherey’s “A Theory of Literary Production” focuses heavily on the relationships between contradicting ideals such as: silence and language, visible and invisible, revealed and concealed, spoken and unspoken, implicit and explicit, and discovered and concealed. In this article, these contradictions are depicted as vital for critics to decipher literary production. Critics cannot only look at what an author states, but must search and examine what the author does not say in order to analyze a piece of work. “Speech eventually has nothing more to tell us: we investigate the silence, for it is the silence that is doing the speaking” (Macherey, 17). This brings to light to idea of spoken and unspoken. What is more important, the speech or what is not said. According to Marcherey the unspoken aspect of a piece is what withholds the true value.
In relations to books and texts, Macherey discusses an idea of incompleteness. A speech or work of literature is incomplete because the audience cannot assume to understand the authors intentions, true thoughts, or feelings. The audience cannot assume because of the unspoken aspect of a piece as mentioned above. This incomplete aspect to a literary piece is referred to as the area of shadow. “The recognition of the area of shadow in or around the work is the initial moment of criticism” (Macherey, 15). Criticism is sparked by what the author leaves unsaid. Criticism is understood by many as an aim to speak the truth about literary expression, bringing up the conflicting ideas of explicit and implicit. Implicit is understood to be not directly stated; however, explicit is directly stated and presented. The explicit aspect of a piece is what is written, but the implicit is what lies in the shadows. The implicit information is what critics aim to speak the truth about.
What does all this mean? From what I can personally decipher from this complex article is that authors are not one hundred percent up front. They do not lay out their truest feelings, ideas, intentions, or motives in their work. The fact that authors hide information in the silence gives rise to criticism. Critics aim to reveal the concealed, and explore the unspoken in hopes of finding truth. As Critical Media and Cultural Studies majors, this task of investigating the silence is bestowed upon us.