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A Voice and Nothing More
A new, philosophically grounded theory of the voice - the voice as the lever of thought, as one of the paramount embodiments of the psychoanalytic object.
Plutarch tells the story of a man who plucked a nightingale and finding but little to eat exclaimed: "You are just a voice and nothing more." Plucking the feathers of meaning that cover the voice, dismantling the body from which the voice seems to emanate, resisting the Sirens' song of fascination with the voice, concentrating on "the voice and nothing more": this is the difficult task that philosopher Mladen Dolar relentlessly pursues in this seminal work.
The voice did not figure as a major philosophical topic until the 1960s, when Derrida and Lacan separately proposed it as a central theoretical concern. In A Voice and Nothing More Dolar goes beyond Derrida's idea of "phonocentrism" and revives and develops Lacan's claim that the voice is one of the paramount embodiments of the psychoanalytic object (objet a). 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.
Plutarch tells the story of a man who plucked a nightingale and finding but little to eat exclaimed: "You are just a voice and nothing more." Plucking the feathers of meaning that cover the voice, dismantling the body from which the voice seems to emanate, resisting the Sirens' song of fascination with the voice, concentrating on "the voice and nothing more": this is the difficult task that philosopher Mladen Dolar relentlessly pursues in this seminal work.
The voice did not figure as a major philosophical topic until the 1960s, when Derrida and Lacan separately proposed it as a central theoretical concern. In A Voice and Nothing More Dolar goes beyond Derrida's idea of "phonocentrism" and revives and develops Lacan's claim that the voice is one of the paramount embodiments of the psychoanalytic object (objet a). 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.
224 pages, Paperback
First published February 17, 2006
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543 people want to read
About the author
Mladen Dolar
66 books54 followersMladen Dolar is a Slovene philosopher, psychoanalyst, cultural theorist and film critic. Dolar was born in Maribor as the son of the literary critic Jaro Dolar.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
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February 13, 2012a few random items in a nonsensical list...
1.one of the most interesting revelations to me, at present (because theory is only interesting to me inasmuch as its application is immediate) is the following notion: the voice assumes a structural function closely akin to that of time. in terms of student writing, compositions that are deemed successful tend to score very highly in the assessment criterion: voice. a consistent, organized/controlled vocal quality gives a composition the feeling of structure, and can even unwittingly deceive or intentionally con the reader into missing or excusing the writer's lack of content knowledge, as they've been so carried along by the 'voice' of the work.
2. the very brief discussion of the defense of the dissertation was entertaining, comical, and fair. "the corpus of a candidate's knowledge has been written down in the dissertation, which--supposedly and optimistically--the members of the committee have all carefully read, but this is not enough, it has to be enacted through the voice and only thus made effective. the general experience of those tedious occasions shows that they are indeed simply a question of vocal display; the supposed testing and questioning of the candidate's knowledge has very little to do with that knowledge itself, and has an entirely ritual and vocal character (supplemented by narcissistic struggles and departmental politics under the banner of promoting pure science)." if you aren't laughing your ass off right now...then you aren't as swept away by english department horror-humor as i.
3. freud's thoughts on instinct and reason/intellectual life. this has been something i've been meaning to resolve/get to the bottom of since my first transgression. freud says, after countless rebuffs reason prevails. thank goodness. ["this is one of the few points on which one may be optimistic about the future of mankind."]
3b. formulating the prob of the neurotic in leibniz's terms: "how can i ever justify my existence? an impossible task in the universe of the sufficient reason. can unconscious desire serve as the name for the sufficient reason of all that lacks a sufficient reason?"
4. the phantasy of listening [belauschungsphantasien].
5. the tragedy and truth of this statement cracks me up, "but nothing is more permanent than makeshift arrangements and temporary measures, which, once established, show a steadfast perseverance and inertia."
6. really beautiful passage in a section about the relationship between language and the unconscious. here's the rough and dirty: there is a time loop--the moment we physically hear, the time in which we make sense of, and the ultimate reckoning with the sound. at any rate, when i read this, i thought of the moment you fall in love--recklessly, impulsively--followed by the fantasy, including the delusional aspects--followed by the harsh reality. "it is gone despite the interpretation which tries to provide it with a framework of sense, the horizon of understanding; or rather, it evaporates through the interpretation which consists of pinning it down to a particular sense, naming its meaning, reducing its nonsense, but loses it precisely by endowing it with a positive content--as if it existed properly only in that instant, if indeed this can be called existence at all." [cut to me weeping.]
7. phonology: "the lever which could endow human sciences with the very strictness which until then seemed to have been the privilege of the natural sciences." yes, in college, i was quite taken with the very idea that phonology was even a word i could throw around.
8. silence.
9. omg. silence is a tricky betch. "silence as the simple absence of speech can acquire the highest meaning, it can be taken as a sign of superior wisdom. silence can be a most telling answer which refers the speaker back to her question and its presuppositions, but it can also be a sign of ignorance, the highest easily mingling with the lowest." and also, "speech always delivers us to the powers of the other." and finally, abbe' dinouart "saw the art of silence in the first place as a weapon against the flood of speech inundating the enlightenment century."
10. the silence of the universe.
11. if the universe is no longer "the expression of the supreme sense, of harmony, of God's wise plan [oh crap] it is the universe which has stopped making sense, and this subtraction of sense coincides with the advent of modern science. this silence is neither the imaginary overwhelming nor the symbolic pulsation. the silence of the new universe does not mean anything, it does not make sense, and in this absence of sense it inspires pascal's anxiety." basically, this was my bitter daily bread during my 19th/20th year on the planet... and from time to time ever since... which i think is unavoidable, maybe. ("le silence eternel des espaces infinis me fait peur." pascal)
12. chapter seven. kafka's voices. final chapter. too many points to pick just one, but in the interest of space and time... "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk" needs to be required reading for all, especially those dreaming of becoming reality television stars or those aspiring artists, and writers, like moi. "despite her vanity and megalomania, people can easily do without her, she will be forgotten, no traces of her art will be left." oh shit!
two footnotes:
qui: 'for what is science but the absence of prejudice backed by the presence of money?' henry james, the golden bowl"
qua: "[bernard] baas puts this very well: 'the voice is never my own voice, but the response is my own response.'"
1.one of the most interesting revelations to me, at present (because theory is only interesting to me inasmuch as its application is immediate) is the following notion: the voice assumes a structural function closely akin to that of time. in terms of student writing, compositions that are deemed successful tend to score very highly in the assessment criterion: voice. a consistent, organized/controlled vocal quality gives a composition the feeling of structure, and can even unwittingly deceive or intentionally con the reader into missing or excusing the writer's lack of content knowledge, as they've been so carried along by the 'voice' of the work.
2. the very brief discussion of the defense of the dissertation was entertaining, comical, and fair. "the corpus of a candidate's knowledge has been written down in the dissertation, which--supposedly and optimistically--the members of the committee have all carefully read, but this is not enough, it has to be enacted through the voice and only thus made effective. the general experience of those tedious occasions shows that they are indeed simply a question of vocal display; the supposed testing and questioning of the candidate's knowledge has very little to do with that knowledge itself, and has an entirely ritual and vocal character (supplemented by narcissistic struggles and departmental politics under the banner of promoting pure science)." if you aren't laughing your ass off right now...then you aren't as swept away by english department horror-humor as i.
3. freud's thoughts on instinct and reason/intellectual life. this has been something i've been meaning to resolve/get to the bottom of since my first transgression. freud says, after countless rebuffs reason prevails. thank goodness. ["this is one of the few points on which one may be optimistic about the future of mankind."]
3b. formulating the prob of the neurotic in leibniz's terms: "how can i ever justify my existence? an impossible task in the universe of the sufficient reason. can unconscious desire serve as the name for the sufficient reason of all that lacks a sufficient reason?"
4. the phantasy of listening [belauschungsphantasien].
5. the tragedy and truth of this statement cracks me up, "but nothing is more permanent than makeshift arrangements and temporary measures, which, once established, show a steadfast perseverance and inertia."
6. really beautiful passage in a section about the relationship between language and the unconscious. here's the rough and dirty: there is a time loop--the moment we physically hear, the time in which we make sense of, and the ultimate reckoning with the sound. at any rate, when i read this, i thought of the moment you fall in love--recklessly, impulsively--followed by the fantasy, including the delusional aspects--followed by the harsh reality. "it is gone despite the interpretation which tries to provide it with a framework of sense, the horizon of understanding; or rather, it evaporates through the interpretation which consists of pinning it down to a particular sense, naming its meaning, reducing its nonsense, but loses it precisely by endowing it with a positive content--as if it existed properly only in that instant, if indeed this can be called existence at all." [cut to me weeping.]
7. phonology: "the lever which could endow human sciences with the very strictness which until then seemed to have been the privilege of the natural sciences." yes, in college, i was quite taken with the very idea that phonology was even a word i could throw around.
8. silence.
9. omg. silence is a tricky betch. "silence as the simple absence of speech can acquire the highest meaning, it can be taken as a sign of superior wisdom. silence can be a most telling answer which refers the speaker back to her question and its presuppositions, but it can also be a sign of ignorance, the highest easily mingling with the lowest." and also, "speech always delivers us to the powers of the other." and finally, abbe' dinouart "saw the art of silence in the first place as a weapon against the flood of speech inundating the enlightenment century."
10. the silence of the universe.
11. if the universe is no longer "the expression of the supreme sense, of harmony, of God's wise plan [oh crap] it is the universe which has stopped making sense, and this subtraction of sense coincides with the advent of modern science. this silence is neither the imaginary overwhelming nor the symbolic pulsation. the silence of the new universe does not mean anything, it does not make sense, and in this absence of sense it inspires pascal's anxiety." basically, this was my bitter daily bread during my 19th/20th year on the planet... and from time to time ever since... which i think is unavoidable, maybe. ("le silence eternel des espaces infinis me fait peur." pascal)
12. chapter seven. kafka's voices. final chapter. too many points to pick just one, but in the interest of space and time... "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk" needs to be required reading for all, especially those dreaming of becoming reality television stars or those aspiring artists, and writers, like moi. "despite her vanity and megalomania, people can easily do without her, she will be forgotten, no traces of her art will be left." oh shit!
two footnotes:
qui: 'for what is science but the absence of prejudice backed by the presence of money?' henry james, the golden bowl"
qua: "[bernard] baas puts this very well: 'the voice is never my own voice, but the response is my own response.'"
March 12, 2023
Admittedly, I'm only conversant enough with Lacan to be dangerous/ultimately make an ass out of myself, but it's not Lacan I was interested in here. Dolar's exploration of what the voice is/could be/what it could mean was fascinating,
December 23, 2022
Mladen Dolar's A Voice and Nothing More is a rich, complex, and lucid meditation on the voice as understood through, primarily, Lacanian psychoanalysis and Hegelian phenomenology. In many ways, reading A Voice and Nothing More reminds me of Alenka Zupančič's What IS Sex? in so far as the density of the argument on practically every page is both revelatory and disarming. I cannot address the size and scope of Dolar's argument here, but I will cite my favorite observation about the voice and how it functions as an "extimate" object. Dolar writes, "Where does the voice come from? It comes from the innermost realm of our being, but at the same time it is something that transcends us, it is in ourselves more than ourselves, yet again, a beyond at our most intimate" (96). Here we see Dolar synthesize Lacanian psychoanalysis with Hegelian thought, specifically the relationship between the transcendent and the material. As Dolar sees it, we must locate the transcendent in the here and now, which is to say, in the mundane materiality of human existence. Quite simply, the transcendent lives among us, and it is incumbent upon us all to search for it there. For Dolar, the voice is the here that houses the there.
December 6, 2025
The voice as 'object a', in its pure irreducibility to signifier, a nonsensical voice dissolving sense and creating a surplus-sense. This book is an investigation to find and conceptualize this elusive voice. This voice is not the self-present, self-reflective voice of consciousness--which is overlaid by the long tradition of metaphysics, as Derrida deconstructed it correctly. However, what Derrida and his deconstructive school miss is the voice as the 'object a'. It is neither of the body nor of the language, it is extralinguistic, extracorporeal. To tame it and epitomize it with the deferential system of meaning of Saussuren linguistic is to downplay the voice, which is a call to bring forth the Being-into-openness in the Heideggerian sense.
(more on this later)
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December 5, 2023My heated fistfight with Dolar coming to an academic conference near you!
P.S. If you live in Cambridge in March 2023 and want to come to my psychoanalytic practices presentation.
P.P.S. He won't be there, he is far too important, so it will be a one-sided fist fight, but nevertheless, I hope to succeed.
P.S. If you live in Cambridge in March 2023 and want to come to my psychoanalytic practices presentation.
P.P.S. He won't be there, he is far too important, so it will be a one-sided fist fight, but nevertheless, I hope to succeed.
February 22, 2011
I first read the German version, His Master's Voice Eine Geschichte der Stimme but thought it was stupid to read it when it came from the English edition, which in turn came from the original. Dolar writes clearly and presents concepts well, though they are better in English. I found the German translations to be confusing at times (especially when there were more than two genitive cases involved).
There was definitely one footnote that I thought seemed a little arrogant. I don't remember exactly where it was or what it was for, but Dolar basically pointed to his own work and praised himself for it.
The nice thing about reading it in both English and German is that there are so many linguistic examples that don't work in English but do in German. Moreover, a lot of the presented examples come from German, like Freud and Kafka, so it's of course better presented in German. However, when the concept is important and not easily translated into English, Dolar left the German and tried to explain it in English as well as possible.
There was definitely one footnote that I thought seemed a little arrogant. I don't remember exactly where it was or what it was for, but Dolar basically pointed to his own work and praised himself for it.
The nice thing about reading it in both English and German is that there are so many linguistic examples that don't work in English but do in German. Moreover, a lot of the presented examples come from German, like Freud and Kafka, so it's of course better presented in German. However, when the concept is important and not easily translated into English, Dolar left the German and tried to explain it in English as well as possible.
December 8, 2013
Mladen Dolar's published with Slavoj Žižek before, but don't let that colour your impression of him too much: Dolar is more cogent and fluid than his fellow Slovenian, and less contentious as well. But, for the admirers, he shines with a similarly charismatic wit and preens occasionally, but never egregiously, of the strengths of psychoanalysis and the limitations of other contemporary continental schools of philosophy such as, for example, Derridean deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence. The book itself is more concentrated than historical, more dilettantish than thoroughgoing, but gains in readability what it sacrifices in density. If you're interested in a post-Lacanian and readable theory of voice in literary terms then, by hell, this is your book.
to-keep-reference
October 18, 2016Como ha señalado Mladen Dolar, su chillido sin sentido (una canción privada de sentido, es decir, reducida a voz-objeto funciona como el urinoir de Marcel Duchamp –es un objeto de arte no por alguna propiedad material inherente, sino solamente porque Josefina ocupa el lugar de una artista– en sí misma, ella es exactamente igual a todos los «ordinarios» miembros del pueblo. Aquí, cantar es, de este modo, el «arte de la mínima diferencia»; lo que diferencia su voz de las otras voces es de naturaleza puramente formal.
Viviendo en el Final de los Tiempos Pág.377
Viviendo en el Final de los Tiempos Pág.377
May 26, 2011
For readers interested in Lacan and Freud, this book will be of value. However, I am interested in the history of the voice, rather than psychoanalysis. There are moments and elements of the argument that are of use to my research, particularly with regard to silence. But I found entire chapters baggy and re-working a narrow theoretical perspective. Obviously I have no interest in Freud or Lacan, but if readers wish to engage with their perspective, then this book would be of value.
December 23, 2007
voice voice voice voice voice
October 16, 2020
Sahibinin Sesi
.
Telefonun diğer ucundaki, hiç görmediğimiz biri hakkında hemen yargı veriyoruz: huysuz birisi, tatlı kız, yaşlı bir amcaydı falan diye. Neye dayanarak?❓ Tüm dünyada O Ses yarışmalarına dikkat edin. Jüri üyesi, şarkı söyleyene döndüğünde her defasında şaşırıyor. Neden?❓ Ses, sahibi hakkında fikirlerimizi oluşturuyor olabilir mi?❓ Belki de önyargıları?❓
.
Sesin, öznenin üstüne giydiği bir kıyafet gibi algılandığının farkındaydım. Kişinin gömlek ya da t-shirt giyişinden hareketle hakkında fikirlerimiz oluşur. Mahkemeye kravatla👔 gitmek cezada indirime sebebiyet verebilir. Aynı şekilde öznenin sesinden🗣️ hareketle de hakkında fikir oluşacaktır. İkisi de özneye dairdir. Bu yüzden #sahibininsesi ilgimi çeker diye düşünmüştüm. Ama öyle olmadı. Yarısına bile gelemeden bıraktım. Beynim yandı çünkü.🤯 Çok ağırdı.
.
Daha önce yine psikanaliz okumaya kalkmıştım. Onu da anlamamıştım. Benlik değilmiş demek ki. En azından bunu öğrenmiş oldum.😄
.
#metisyayınları #kitap #kitaptavsiyesi #kitapyorumu #kitapönerisi
.
Telefonun diğer ucundaki, hiç görmediğimiz biri hakkında hemen yargı veriyoruz: huysuz birisi, tatlı kız, yaşlı bir amcaydı falan diye. Neye dayanarak?❓ Tüm dünyada O Ses yarışmalarına dikkat edin. Jüri üyesi, şarkı söyleyene döndüğünde her defasında şaşırıyor. Neden?❓ Ses, sahibi hakkında fikirlerimizi oluşturuyor olabilir mi?❓ Belki de önyargıları?❓
.
Sesin, öznenin üstüne giydiği bir kıyafet gibi algılandığının farkındaydım. Kişinin gömlek ya da t-shirt giyişinden hareketle hakkında fikirlerimiz oluşur. Mahkemeye kravatla👔 gitmek cezada indirime sebebiyet verebilir. Aynı şekilde öznenin sesinden🗣️ hareketle de hakkında fikir oluşacaktır. İkisi de özneye dairdir. Bu yüzden #sahibininsesi ilgimi çeker diye düşünmüştüm. Ama öyle olmadı. Yarısına bile gelemeden bıraktım. Beynim yandı çünkü.🤯 Çok ağırdı.
.
Daha önce yine psikanaliz okumaya kalkmıştım. Onu da anlamamıştım. Benlik değilmiş demek ki. En azından bunu öğrenmiş oldum.😄
.
#metisyayınları #kitap #kitaptavsiyesi #kitapyorumu #kitapönerisi
October 19, 2024
Contains nothing more than its title. Great book.
October 10, 2025
Fascinating book.
May 9, 2008
There are some interesting ideas, but that's gotta be weighed against the completely obnoxious prose style - classic academic in love with the sound of his own voice, merrily following his flights of whimsy. Any associations that spring up are treated as valid, meaningful connections. Still though, some interesting stuff.
November 22, 2012
This is such an incredible book! A very sophisticated critique of Derrida and theories of language, Dolar uses the voice as the subject of his study. He argues that the voice, a priori to text or logos, plays a vital role in modern formations of power. For theories of sound, this will surely be an important book, at least in this early stage. There is still a lot of work to be done.
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October 20, 2013Grist for the mill...
December 31, 2016
At last a book psychoanalyzed my interest in psychoanalysis and diagnosed my desire and its connection with my object of desire: Freedom!
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews