A voice and nothing more download

Dolar proposes that, apart from the two commonly understood uses of the voice as a vehicle of meaning and as a source of aesthetic admiration, there is a third level of understanding: the voice as an object that can be seen as the lever of thought.

He investigates the object voice on a number of different levels--the linguistics of the voice, the metaphysics of the voice, the ethics of the voice with the voice of conscience , the paradoxical relation between the voice and the body, the politics of the voice--and he scrutinizes the uses of the voice in Freud and Kafka. With this foundational work, Dolar gives us a philosophically grounded theory of the voice as a Lacanian object-cause.

Table of Contents. Cover Download Save contents. Title Page, About the Series, Copyright pp. Contents pp.

Series Foreword pp. Introduction: Che bella voce! Chapter 1 The Linguistics of the Voice pp. Chapter 2 The Metaphysics of the Voice pp.

Chapter 4 The Ethics of the Voice pp. Chapter 5 The Politics of the Voice pp. Notes pp. Bibliography pp. When the voice is needed on those occasions, it is the voice properly circumscribed, tamed, pacified, yet the voice which is absolutely necessary to complement the letter, or to complete and accomplish the letter; it is like its lost half which enables its enactment.

It is the voice which, ritually, ensures the proper authority of the letter. All the cases which were briefly given here as examples rely on a structure of division of labor, as it were: there is a coexistence of the letter and the voice, and it is quite clear where and when the voice should intervene in order to enact the letter.

The two functions are clearly delimited and circumscribed, and the intervention of the voice is called upon in specific and well-defined places and times.

This division gives an impression of a peaceful coexistence, a complementarity, as if the letter would find in the use of the voice the missing half it has been seeking. The voice is used only in the place and at the time allotted to it, and everything depends on the boundary being maintained, although it can be blurred or problematic.

The division of labor between the letter and the voice can no doubt acquire a variety of perverse forms, but it is nevertheless at the same time a remedy, a tool to oppose obnoxious effects of power and to limit its misuse, although its value and efficacy have to be carefully examined in particular cases.