The notion that cinema is able to deliver “real” sounds is an extension of that powerful Western episteme, extending from Plato to Hélène Cixous, which identifies the voice with proximity and the here and now—of a metaphysical tradition which defines speech as the very essence of presence. (p.43)
fetishistic value which a surprising number of film theoreticians have conferred upon the voice—to the key role it has been asked to play in the larger project of disavowing cinema’s lack (43)
Lacan, who remarks in “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis” that “I identify myself in language, but only by losing myself in it like an object.” Lacan emphasizes here that speech produces absence, not presence. (p. 43)
he (Lacan) indicates that language preexists and coerces speech—that it can
never be anything but “Other.”(p.44)
the voice-over is privileged to the degree that it transcends the body. Conversely, it
loses power and authority with every corporeal encroachment, from a regional accent or idiosyncratic “grain” to definitive localization in the image. (p.49)
fantasy of the maternal-voice-as-sonorous-envelope
Rosolato, for instance, regards the “pleasurable milieu” of the maternal voice as “the first model of auditory pleasure,” whereas Chion associates it with the terror of an “umbilical night.” (p.72)