AS, Macherey and Jencks

So the theme of this blog shall be “dig deep.” The problem is I don’t know where I’m digging to. I’m actually quite nervous about hitting a sewer line. Then of course we’d have something to discuss…the artful splatter of feces and what the absence of cleanliness reveals about the presence of immorality in our culture. Or something.

So we love the past while we run from it -- constantly revisiting the traditional while furiously developing the new. Be that in art, architecture, literature, journalism, whatever. Old fashioned and quaint are bad words for ten years until someone remembers the charm of old fashioned ice cream and quaint bed and breakfasts and there we are again, eating a sticky strawberry cone while rocking in a vintage inspired swing on the little white-washed porch of an overpriced B&B. I can’t say I’m crystal on Saussure, Barthes, Macherey, and Jencks (especially Saussure). Maybe I’m just used to lazy compliance. Maybe I just see a soup can instead of art. Maybe my binary opposition is awareness. Maybe paradox just pisses me off. Anyway, I’ve gleaned more from my classmates’ responses then I did from the readings themselves. So, thank you guys, your mis-readings have helped shape my own.

As I’m struggling with the concepts of signifier and signified, presence and absence, pleasure and bliss, implicit and explicit, I’m drawn most frequently to how integrated everything is – or as Jencks summarizes: “no centre, but connections.” You can’t find an independent subject anywhere. Language to literature to architecture, everything means something, and endless connections reveal endless truths.

The Week is a magazine comprised of media compilations from the proceeding week (spot-on title, don’t you think?). It is published under the tagline, “All you need to know about everything that matters.” Hybrid and ironic, it is a weekly print publication that presents a collage-account of the biggest stories of the week. The reader is guaranteed “the best of the U.S. and International media.” That’s a tall order to fill in only 38 pages. These articles, reviews, and commentaries – ranging from the latest terror plot to the remarkably “grounded” Ivanka Trump – supposedly highlight the most important news of any given week. My favorite magazine does all my thinking for me. A given concern, issue or topic, a counter argument, and a lively debate are all provided to me, a member of the discerning public, in 500 words or less. Only one hitch, I have to actually read it myself.

The love affair is over; the excitement of what I could learn all in one place has paled in comparison with the inclination of all that I’m missing. I’m now interested in the discarded world events – the thousands of stories that didn’t match someone’s idea of “best.”