Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

 

Archive

 

Volume 7 Number 3, December 2006

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Dolar, Mladen. A Voice and nothing more. London, England. MIT Press, 2006. Pp213

ISBN 0-262-54187-4  12.95 paperback.  

 

Reviewed by

 

Christine Boyko-Head

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.