Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 7 Number 3, December 2006
___________________________________________________________________
Dolar, Mladen. A
Voice and nothing more. London, England. MIT Press, 2006. Pp213
ISBN
0-262-54187-4 12.95 paperback.
Reviewed by
Lesley University
Mladen Dolar begins A Voice and nothing more with Plutarch’s
famous quotation about a man and a nightingale. Having plucked the fowl for
food, the man sadly exclaims, “You are just a voice and nothing more”. Yet,
if we follow the nightingale image through literature, we realize Plutarch’s
story is misleading and highly ironic. The literary nightingale is overstuffed
with significance: concrete, aesthetic, political and psychological.
The emergence, convergence, and divergence of these levels of meaning
form the elaborate platform of Dolar’s well-written book about the object
voice, the voice distinct from the body, the voice freed from the masquerade of
identity, the voice liberated from the Symbolic’s signifying chain, the voice
and nothing more. Claiming the voice to be something that exceeds speech and
meaning only to occupy a space of “quintessential humanity“ (p 11), Dolar
embarks on (ful)-filling the need for a “theory of the voice, the object
voice, the voice as one of the paramount embodiments of what Lacan called objet
petit a” (11). Using classical and contemporary references, Dolar’s
originality of ’voice’ attests to Lacanian psychology as a rich, energizing
field for far-reaching exploration. His true gift to the reader is his ability
to roll the complexities of Lacan’s theoretical model and concepts with
linguistic, metaphysical, physical, ethical and political considerations
achieving a fresh and profound perspective on the voice and much more.
Proceeding with philosophical dexterity, lucid and playful writing and a warm
and witty ‘voice’, Dolar serves the reader a well-thought, well-versed and
well-worthy read.
In an incredible, seven short chapters, Dolar methodically problematizes
the voice through a re-positioning and re-visioning of its status within
philosophical traditions - traditions that privilege langue over parole,
the Word over speech, the written law over the performative voice. But Dolar
is not content to merely invert traditional thought and systems by privileging
phonocentric thinking. Instead, the book turns the issue of voice and
phonocentrism upside down and inside by inserting the Lacanian Other into
the voi(ce)d. A voice and
nothing more succeeds in creating a convincing argument [with profound
effects for explorations in other areas - such as education, and the
arts]because Dolar has one goal in mind - to pursue the object voice. He then
follows this central theme with a consistent, coherent and repetitive
methodology. Namely, he grounds his work in theoretical history, then
problematizes the voice in order to proclaim its “ambiguous ontology - or,
rather, topology - of the status of the voice as . . . placed precisely at the
curious intersection. . . of the subject and the Other,. . . body and language.
. . linguistic and ethical. . . art and science ” (102-3, 187), and uses
excellent examples as evidence.
Each chapter explores the object voice as more than a vehicle of meaning
and a source of aesthetic pleasure. He does this by drawing on the familiar yet
overlooked (or overheard) as intriguing proof. Then he positions the objet voice
within a point of breach, gap, void, to ultimately suggest its signification as
the locus of Lacanian liminality. This space is then argued as being the locus
of the subject’s desired freedom - a freedom perpetually and repeatedly sought
within psychoanalytical and artistic processes. He so carefully steps us through
his though process that the reader can not help but say, “I hear you, and I
understand”.
Chapter one begins with the obvious: the predominance of voice in daily
living. Attention is brought to the voices that fill the ‘air waves’ as well
as the voices of nature, progress, civilized chaos and the internal and external
voices of silence, the silences and the unheard. Despite this cacophony of
voices, philosophical tradition views the voice as the mere vehicle of meaning
where the voice must diminish in order for the Word to increase. Here, St.
Augustine meets Structuralism in the “total reduction of the voice as the
substance of language” (19). However, Dolar then introduces these two Goliaths
to Keenu Reeves where the image of
the Matrix becomes the new framework for empowering the voice as the support of
the signifier since in its disappearing/appearing state it becomes the linkage
between different signifiers. Dolar strengths his ‘matrix’ by examining the
pre- and post-linguistic voice - hiccups, coughing, laughter, screaming - where
the “non-articulate itself becomes a mode of the articulate” (24) as it
“tries to reach the other” (28).
Chapter two deals with metaphysical theory in order to show that the
history of logocentrism does not parallel phonocentrism. In his brief history of
metaphysics, Dolar quotes Derrida to establish a connection between the voice
and consciousness. Just as in Chapter one, Dolar moves beyond theoretical
tradition to point out paradoxes, contradictions and gaps regarding voice. For
example, music is introduced as “the voice beyond the Word, the unbounded
voice” (50), the lawless voice, the voice beyond the signifier, beyond sense,
beyond limits. Evoking Lacan’s theory of the Law and the Other, Dolar
states that “we have not the battle of logos against the voice, but
that of the voice against the voice” (56).
From here, chapter three and four present further philosophical threads:
the physics of the voice, and the ethics of the voice. Taken together, these two
chapters illustrate Dolar’s awareness of the value in wrapping complex
theoretical material within the familiar and the contemporary. Focusing on the
acoustmatic voice, or the disembodied voice, and its Authority, chapter three
uses the popular HMV logo of the dog listening to his Master’s voice through a
gramophone to further his argument. He then brings the reader face to face with
Lacan’s complex ideas regarding the gaze. Chapter four uses the same stylistic
strategy regarding the link between the voice and ethics, or the voice and
conscience. This repetitive strategy of using well-chosen, familiar evidence
assists Dolar in positioning the voice as existing at an(Other) intersection
between two distinct realms while making his ideas accessible to a wider
audience.
The accessibility of A Voice and nothing more reaches its
crescendo in chapter five: the politics of the voice. Dolar furthers his use of
contemporary exemplars by calling on historical figures like Hitler, Stalin and
Chaplin‘s cinematic dictator,- and examines the ritual and sacred apparatuses
of society as systems that privilege the per-formative aspect of the voice over
the letter of the law. Building on chapter three’s insertion of responsibility
into the juncture occupied by the voice, chapter five inserts a standard of
judgement, the manifestation of the just and the unjust, into the voi(ce)d,
where “the authority of writing depends on its being the faithful copy of the
voice. We are given fascinating and stimulating glimpses into the voice as
enacting the law as well as the voice that “puts (sic) into question the
literate and its authority” (113). Examples of diverse leaders provide the
argument with gusto and show how “all phenomena of totalitarianism tend to
hinge overbearingly on the voice, which in a quid pro quo tends to
replace the authority of the letter, or put its validity into question.”
(114). This parade of historical leaders leaves room in the rear for the reader
to determine how contemporary leaders fit the scenario. A throne speech or State
of the Union address will never be heard the same way again!
From Dolar’s admittedly biased position, a position reflected in the
reader, government, education and psychoanalysis “involve voice at their
core” (123), a per formative voice that calls all attempts at neutrality into
question. Clearly it is no accident that the final chapters in the book move
from an overt discussion of politics to the personal politics of psychoanalysis
and art. In these final chapters we see the relationship between the first
chapter’s mention of zio and bio, between naked life and life lived in the
society, and the subject’s repetitive search for the real - the truth, the
ultimate yet impossible signifier that frees us from the perpetual song of
signifiers. This quest re-positions the voice as the key pathway to freedom and
holds interesting potential for further research into the areas of education,
civic performance, and art. Like the voice, art remains in the gap, the breach
of social action not moving toward transience or immanence but
holding/suspending the tension between two realms and thereby gaining prominence
in its artful play in the equation. ‘The voice is the source of food that
[Kafka’s dog] has been seeking” (186).
Ultimately, Mladen Dolar’s philosophical voice, while engaging us with
the voices of various metaphysical, physical, ethical, and political choruses,
returns us to the Other voice, the voice of the Other, the voice of the petit
objet a - the common source of
both food and music where “freedom is there at all times, everywhere” (188).
Confident in his own voice, Mladen Dolar considers his audience and, rather than
obscuring his argument in academic jabberwocky, makes the reader’s experience
of his thesis a joyful engagement. The strength of
this text is Dolar’s ability to combine philosophical complexities with
familiar yet fresh illuminations. A
Voice and nothing more, while not an audio book, hums, whistles, sings with the voice of a philosophical
‘nightingale’ exploring exciting territory that elevates Lacan’s work
beyond its psychoanalytical field and positions the voice at the forefront of
new examinations into freedom of language, body, mind, society and art.