An immensely ambitious theoretical edifice in which new relations between Kant and Marx are established, as well as a new kind of synthesis between Marxism and anarchism. The book is timely from both practical and theoretical perspectives, and stands up well against a tradition of Marx exegesis that runs from Rosdolsky and Korsch to Althusser and Tony Smith.
Fredric Jameson, William A. Lane, Jr., Professor of Comparative Literature, Duke University
Miladen Dolar's book breaks through the impasse of extrinsic vs. intrinsic accounts of the voice, and shows how they fail to get at its truly uncanny topology and its strange persistence within and beyond the multiple significations it carries. Firmly rooted in Lacan and Freud, his argument passes through an extraordinary range of texts on voice, from Plato and Augustine to Kafka, Lewis Carroll, and Charlie Chaplin. dolar's readings are strong, lucid, and convincing, and he writes with a warm with and intelligence that are entirely his own. He has written, without a doubt, the definitive book on the topic.
Kenneth Reinhard, Departments of English and Comparative Literature, Unviversity of California
In his first Duino Elegy and in a strophe dedicated to the hearing of voices, Rilke speaks of 'the ceaseless message that forms itself from silence.' In this tour de force of philosophical engagement with our acoustic universe, Mladen Dolar has given us the key to this message, to what it means to be genuinely responsive to it. Our understanding of language, ethics, politics, philosophy, and aesthetic experience will never be the same.
Eric L. Santner, Chair, Department of Germanic Studies, University of Chicago
It takes a certain intrepid curiosity to pick up a book that is not of one's universe—to plunge into an in-depth examination of a common phenomenon. But the payoff can be huge: a new meaning, new resonance accruing to something one previously paid barely any attention to. A Voice and Nothing More is such a book-a deeply academic yet readable inquiry into the nature of voice and its role as a bridge between nature and culture, subject and other, body and language, the personal and the political...Again, no worries: There will be no final exam; this is just life, examined carefully.
Los Angeles Times Book Review
Mladen Dolar acts as if he is not an idiot and looks as if he is not an idiot, but this should not deceive you he is NOT an idiot!
Slavoj Žižek
The most telling, even thrilling, passages in this exacting book emphasize the intricate knitting together of body and soul in the voice...Though A Voice and Nothing More is driven throughout by ardent and formidable intelligence, Dolar is, like George Meridith's A Later Alexandrian, mad for the kind of 'mystic wryness' that Lacanian theory so amply allows. Indeed, the last words of his book make it clear that he regards the mysteries of the voice as a kind of royal road to the Secret Doctrine of Psychoanalysis.
Steven Connor
Bookforum