Abstract

Blanchot’s rejection of vision as the fundamental philosophical metaphor is well known: “Seeing is not speaking” 25). Furthermore, his central idea of the limit-experience is a “detour from everything visible and invisible”. As part of his Heideggerian heritage, the increased importance of hearing lacks the critical appraisal it deserves. Pari passu for voice. Blanchot’s investigation of voice, spoken, interior, literary, is extensive. Various works of fiction, notably The One Who Was Standing Apart From Me, explore the meme, which is intensified in critical essays on Hölderlin, Kafka, Rilke, and Valéry, where the voice’s musicality is given to performance. The studies exemplify the operation of “pure voice,” voice no longer in relation to and under the constraints of the interlocutor: its rhythm, tempo, and melody. His clearest, though lapidary, remarks on voice appear in disc...