ginny t., Macherey

Ok. Culture of fear? I understand. Faster is better? I understand. Madonna? I understand. Macherey? Not so much.

I realize that Dr. Rog warned us from the beginning that this class was going to be challenging, and the reading difficult, but.... I honestly had no idea what I was reading when I sat down this weekend with the texts from Hell. None. I felt (feel) like I was (am) missing something--three years as an English major already under my belt, perhaps? Though I could understand the words on the page, I could not make (much) sense of what those words actually meant when strung together in sentences. Suddenly, I knew what it must feel like to have some kind of degenerative brain disorder...mmm...word salad!

Thankfully, being stuck in the car on an interminable drive from Western North Carolina to Orlando, I 've had some time to digest those bitter, bitter sentences. Just as Barthes said, I did not (could not) read these passages word for word. Instead, I let my brain and eyes skip over sentences, trying to comprehend as much as I could. And just like his reference to reading Proust (not that I have ever read Proust,) I did indeed discover passages in the text upon rereading (and sometimes, re-rereading) that I didn't even notice the first time around. These passages from Macherey are ones that I discovered hiding in the word salad: "...the work is revealed to itself and to others on two different levels: it makes visible, and it makes invisible." (p 19) and "Speech eventually has nothing more to tell us: we investigate the silence, for it the silence that is doing the speaking." (p 17) While I'm not quite ready to apply these theories to Literature (with a capital L,) I think I can apply it to life (operating on the assumption that "reality is text.")

As we were driving into town this afternoon, I saw a billboard on I-4 advertising loud and proud that Cocoa Beach is "Orlando's Closest Beach!" Not Orlando's cleanest beach, not Orlando's nicest beach, but Orlando's closest. Two days ago, I would have laughed off that sign and its lack-luster enthusiasm for Cocoa Beach; I would have chalked up the dubious "Closest!" campaign to a lazy ad exec. Now I realize that the PR person wasn't lazy, they're brilliant! That sign silently screams "Faster is better!" The advertisement perfectly encapsulates the "Whatever" attitude of most people living in Postmodern America. Who cares if the beach is clean, safe, or even fun? As long as it's convenient, we'll take it. We'll be too busy talking on our cell phones, thumbing through our Us Weeklys, listening to our iPods, and texting on our blackberrys to even really enjoy that we're at the beach in the first place.

We are so distracted by what is being said, that most people don't ever notice what isn't being said. For most American's, our entire lives revolve around media and television; most people are so distracted by the deluge of information, that we lose touch with ourselves and the people around us. If we could extract ourselves from the constant barrage of media and language and tune in to the whisperings around us (environmental crisis, civil rights violations, foreign policy nightmares, etc...), maybe there is hope for Us yet.