Sunday, September 4, 2016

Gaps, Spaces, and the In-between Bianca Silva., de Saussure, Barthes, Macherey

       The texts from this week were complex and at times difficult to understand, but otherwise thought-provoking. In “Course in General Linguistics”, de Saussure claims that language is the amalgamation of a “series of differences of sound” and “a series of differences of ideas” (de Saussure 11). The metaphor that assisted me in understanding or visualizing this concept was the sheet of paper in which the front is thought and the back is sound. You cannot separate the two from each other; both are necessary to produce what he defines as “form.” Perhaps this how we acknowledge that language is more than just a system of labeling. Indeed, concepts are understood not by their positive content but on the their “relations with other terms” (de Saussure 9). I speak both Spanish and English therefore I am able to see that indeed words are not equivalent to pre-existing concepts, because there are not always literal translations from one language to the next.
            I could not help but notice that in the readings their seemed to be themes of differences, spaces, and the in between. Macherey’s “A Theory of Literary Production” was the most challenging reading for me, however I enjoyed his exploration of explication and implication as well as silence in speech. He suggests that we should not only examine the “manifest” or the content that is formally present, but also the “latent”, which is the concealed content that can be found in the absence of words. Nietzsche questions what the concealed has to show; perhaps our prejudice or what we are predisposed to think. It is clear in the media that the explicit content is influencing us to perceive something a certain way. Maybe we need to take a step back from what we are being explicitly told and notice what the implicit is telling us. For example, there might be implicit racism, sexism, or other forms of discrimination that are not being blatantly displayed that show us how institutionalized they are within our society.

            Continuing the theme of gaps and spaces, Barthes suggests that the most erotic portion of a body is where the garment gapes. That is the body of text, in which “tmesis” is described as the gap where we tend to inject our own meaning. Similar to reading the implications of a text, “text of bliss” (the text that does not fill in all the gaps for us), propels us to challenge what we are used to. Barthes claims that “text of bliss” causes the destruction of culture and loss of selfhood versus “text of pleasure” which engenders the hedonism of culture and consistency of selfhood. Overall I imagine that on our journey during this course in which we examine all types of media and texts, Barthes and Macherey’s concepts will prove to be extremely relevant.

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