Dolar's Volumized Voice and Softened Power

Mladen Dolar’s A Voice and Nothing More analyzes an impressive array of philosophical texts on the voice through a Freudian and Lacanian lens to position the voice as mediator of meaning between language and body and to pursue it as the psychoanalytic object.

In chapter 4, “The Ethics of the Voice,” Dolar delivers a series of observations concerning the volume and power of the voice of reason/intellect, the first of which is this statement, reminiscent of his earlier meditation on John the Baptist:

The voice of reason, silent as it may be, is the power of the powerless, the mysterious force which compels us to follow reason. (90)

A page later, Dolar qualifies and alters the previous configuration of voice and power, borrowing from Freud what Dolar says is “the very same metaphor” but what is actually a modification and/or clarification of the previous sentence:

The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest till it has gained a hearing. (91)

Just after the long Freud quote from which the preceding sentence was extracted, Dolar rejoins with yet another, albeit less eloquent, synthesis of his own initial observation about the volume and power of the voice and the one he quoted from Freud:

So hopes for the future of mankind are again vested in the voice of reason, which, soft and quiet as it may be, will nevertheless gain the upper hand, and will ultimately get heard. (91)

The voice undergoes distinct shifts in volume and power as we move through the text. In terms of volume, the voice goes from being “the voice of reason silent” in Dolar’s words to “the voice of the intellect is a soft one” in the Freud quote, then on to Dolar’s “the voice of reason, which, soft and quiet as it may be.” The first adjective used to describe the voice in this sequence, “silent,” echoes a previous description of the voice as one that retains the capacity, even as it is “completely silent,” to “‘overcry’ all other voices” (90). The “silent” voice of our sentence, then, is “completely silent,” absolutely without sound, yet able to be heard over and above all other voices. But in the next reference to the voice, borrowed from Freud, Dolar not only alters the voice from that of reason to that of “the intellect,” but he also turns up the volume of the voice, from “silent” to “a soft one” (91). There is some ambiguity in the word “soft,” which we know can mean either not very loud, as in having some soft music playing in the background, or it can mean not hard, harsh, or severe, as in soft to the touch, unaggressive in its relationships to others. Though we’ve been primed with all this talk of the voice to believe “soft” means not very loud, in Freud’s use of the word “soft,” there’s no indication that he’s referring to volume at all; the actions in the next part of the sentence – the voice “does not rest” and “gain[s] a hearing” – imply that the softness of the voice describes its impetus for offensive action on its own behalf, maybe even its drive. Nothing in the sentence or excerpted quote gives the impression that volume is what’s “soft”; indeed, the excerpt’s economy is one of power, not of volume: words like “powerlessness” and “weakness” are used to describe “man’s intellect.” Dolar himself further complicates matters by asserting in the third iteration of this concept that the “voice of reason” is both “soft and quiet as it may be,” implying by his use of the two adjectives that they do not mean the same thing, that he requires both to describe the full impact of the power and volume of the voice. In this last sentence, Dolar further delineates the words’ meanings when he asserts that the voice “will nevertheless gain the upper hand,” suggesting that the voice’s softness will not prevent it from being overpowered, and the voice “will ultimately get heard,” suggesting that the voice’s volume will not prevent it from speaking. He repeats this gesture a few sentences later when detailing why the “soft powerless voice which one can barely hear emerges as the most improbable candidate for a dictatorship; its barely perceptible sound has all the markings of a future dictator” (91). We see through these final enunciations that not only has volume increased as we move through the text, but also power has softened, in its assertion of its power but not its force.

But my question remains unanswered: why does the voice get louder from one page to the next? A second question that should be added is why the belated emphasis on the softness of the power(lessness)? Is there something intrinsic to the volume of the voice which affects the recognition of the power in the powerlessness of the voice of reason? The repetition of the construction “as it may be” (first “silent as it may be” then “quiet as it may be”) demands we read the sentences as echoes of one another, so why is the second echo louder than the first? The voice of reason: talks softly and carries, well, a small stick too? I have no answer to these questions, just more questions about the imbrications of voice, volume, and soft power.