A VOICE AND NOTHING MORE by Mladen Dólar

Author:Mladen Dólar [SPi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780262260602

THE ANTIPOLITICS OF THE VOICE

Those reemergences of the voice in the midst of social life, which in principle is based on “the letter of the law,” those occurrences linked to quasi-sacred or ritualistic occasions, present some highly telling and symptomatic points where the element of the voice as such is called upon to perform a crucial social function. They point to the necessary appearance of the voice at certain ritualistic points of a society which is thoroughly governed and organized by written laws, rules, and prescriptions—it is the fiction of the universal accessibility of the letter and of its unchangeable nature which makes the law possible, as opposed to the fleeting nature of voices. 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.8 This is also where the ritual use of the voice differs from its attachment to the superego: what is at stake in the ritual is the codification of the voice and its public presentation, it is used as the lever of social performativity, as a seal of community and the acknowledgment of its symbolic efficacy, the voice as the practice of the letter; while with the superego the main point is to escape publicity and to keep its code hidden—if it makes a public appearance, it always produces an effect of the obscene.

But this ritual use of the voice is not the only story or the whole story—far from it. 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.

In sharp contrast to this, there is another kind of voice, a very different use and function of voice which has the effect not of enacting, but of putting into question the letter itself and its authority.

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