Western metaphysics also treated the voice as threatening, not only as presence
Evidence
“There exists a different metaphysical history of voice, where the voice, far from being the safeguard of presence, was considered to be dangerous, threatening and possibly ruinous.” Tellingly, Dolar’s alternative history of metaphysics goes via the treatment of music. (Incidentally, it is hard not to read Plato’s admonition, quoted by Dolar, that “[a] change to a new type of music is something to beware of as a hazard of all our fortunes… [f]or the modes of music are never disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political and social conventions” as a critique of both PoMo popism and nostalgic rockism). Dolar’s argument is that Law-Logos has always sought to differentiate itself from a voice conceived of as feminine and chaotic, but Logos cannot extirpate the voice, and indeed depends upon it: what is the fundamental expression of the Law if not the voice of the Father? — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1184
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines Dolar’s counter-thesis to Derrida: a parallel metaphysical history where voice is danger, not safe presence.
- QUESTION: Worth chasing Dolar’s ‘A Voice and Nothing More’ directly for its musical grounding of a counter-history of metaphysics.
- XREF: connects to: Western metaphysics has a counter-tradition treating voice as dangerous and ruinous, not pure presence — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1184; Heidegger saw his linguistic violence as necessary to a philosophical overthrow of metaphysics — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 210
Broader Connections
- Western metaphysics has a counter-tradition treating voice as dangerous and ruinous, not pure presence
#corroborates(1.00) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1184 - Heidegger saw his linguistic violence as necessary to a philosophical overthrow of metaphysics
#complicates(0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 210