Mladen Dolar (2006) _A Voice and Nothing More_, Cambridge mass.: MIT Press.

Mladen Dolar's A Voice and Nothing More, begins with a short story about the failure of the voice to interpellate (2006: 3). A command is given loud and clear by a commander of an army to attack its enemy, but nobody moves. The command is repeated twice more to no effect, at which point a voice says 'What a beautiful voice!'. The soldiers refuse to execute the command and instead contemplate the aesthetic properties of the expression. Certain codeworks and non-executable code operates in a similar realm. 

The book develops the idea of three voices: one that carries meaning; one that elicits aesthetic appreciation; and thirdly, the one that Dollar invests in, an object voice that 'functions as a blind spot in the call and as a disturbance of aesthetic appreciation' (2006: 4). This is the voice that similarly comes close, not to instruction or expression, but to something that does not entirely compute. 

Speaking machine (cf. history/action):

Reference is also made, rather apologetically (given its common interpretation and canonical status), to the opening passage of Benjamin's 'Theses on the Philosophy of History' and its use of von Kempelen's chess playing automaton. The ghost in the machine turns out to be dwarf chess player. The operator appears to be pulling the strings of the puppet but the allegory suggests that it is the puppet is endowed with agency. In Benjamin this confirms that historical materialism 'wins'. In Dolar's interpretation, the voice connects to this through reference to a history of speaking machines. The problem of how to invent a machine that could replicate the complexities of the human mouth and vocal chords, attests to the power of speech and its cultural significance but also to its impossibility. 

In 1780, the Royal Academy of Science in St. Petersburg offered a prize to construct such a machine that could reproduce vowel sounds and explain their properties (Dolar 2006: 7). Von Kempelen's 'die Sprech-Maschine' (still be be seen in the Deutsches Museum, Munich) was one such entry, a wooden box connected to bellows that operated as lungs, and a rubber funnel that operated as a mouth> The mouth was modified by hand to produce speech in combination with a series of valves - a fuller description is offered by on Kempelen in his _Mechanismus de menschlichen Srache nebst Beschreibung eider sprechenden Maschine_ [The mechanism of the human speech with the description of a speaking machine]. To Dollar, there exists a ghost in the machine, necessarily so for any effect that has an unexplainable cause bound up in the mysteries of the voice itself and the way it is tied to individual subjectivity (and to the unconscious in Dollars work, as if the machine itself could be said to possess consciousness). Part of the mass appeal of von Kempelen's machine was this link between subjectivity and voice, or in the chess playing machine between subjectivity and the ability to think (consciousness) - 'phone' and 'logos'. Yet, whereas the chess playing automaton was anthropomorphic, the speaking machine was not. The attraction of the speaking machine was partly that something so nonhuman could replicate human qualities and effects (Dollar 2006: 9; the invention of the telephone emerges from this fascination). Dolar develops the relation between the two machines in Hegelian terms: from 'in-itself' in the case of the speaking machine to 'for-itself' in the thinking machine (2006: 9). The idea here is to suggest that speech is the hidden mechanism behind thought, like the puppet in the chess playing automaton - or in this case is the hidden puppet within the hidden puppet (the Lacanian 'object-cause' in Dolar's thesis). What is proposed is that Benjamin's conclusion be modified such that 'if the puppet called historical materialism is to win, it should enlist the services of the voice' (Dollar 2006: 11). 
[ADD: actor-network theory use of puppet figure.]

Note:
Gadgets, especially perhaps those connected to the mobile phone could be understood as substituting for this hidden mechanism of the voice. that this is locked down in the case of the iPhone makes transparency an urgent issue and underlines how subjectivity in the form of the voice is somehow captured in the use of these devices. 

Ethics/Politics:

Ethics is bound to the voice (as the voice of conscience) so much so that it has become a guided concept for ethical issues. Socrates talks about as a child: 'It is a voice, and whenever it speaks it turns me away from something I am about to do, but it never encourages me to do anything.' (quoted in Plato's _Apology_, in Dolar, 2006: 84) To Socrates, who did not write his philosophy but speak it, the voice is the 'unwritten law' pertaining to the moral law in contrast to the written law. It takes on a kind of authority in this way and carries the inner voice of moral integrity. It is the voice of reason in so much as the source is from the depths of human consciousness (or 'being'). It is easy to see how the idea of silencing the voice is a powerful image linked to first principles of freedom of speech. It is almost unbearable to think of silencing speech. It is clearly more than a metaphor. In democratic societies and totalitarian regimes alike (its social dimension and its authority), the voice is fundamental.

In Aristotle's _Politics_, he defines the political in terms of the distinction between mere voice and speech, the intelligible voice - 'phone' and 'logos' - the former common to all animals including the human animal, but the latter distinguishing humans over other animals and their ability to articulate judgements in association with others. The distinction of two forms of life is what Agamben is also referring to in his work on 'bare life' - on the one hand there is 'zoe', bare life, life in common with animals, and on the other 'bios', life in the community, the commons, political life. Agamben makes an analogy of the distinction between voice and speech with bare life and politics (in Dolar 2006: 106). But these are not oppositions but ways of understanding that one in embedded in the other and not simply external to it (informed by topology): in other words, that bare life is a paradoxical concept that is both included and excluded from politics (this is 'biopolitics' in Foucault). Agamben explains: 'Let us call the _relation of exception_ the extreme form of relation which includes something by its exclusion' (1997: 26; cf. the state of exception). To Dolar, this is an invitation to examine the analogy and think of the inclusion/exclusion of the voice in speech. Both bare life and the voice are included/excluded in the political realm. One can see examples of the 'bare voice' in legal proceedings, in political representation, and in the examination of doctoral degrees, where the voice is what is counted. The Latin phrase _viva voce_ encapsulates this, meaning 'with living voice', or commonly understood as 'by word of mouth'. To give voice to something is to believe it wholeheartedly as if life depended on it and this demonstrates the biopolitical dimension succinctly.