Barthes and the Voice: The Acousmatic and Beyond

Barthes’s attention to the voice features a concern with singularity; the voice is subject to an absolutely singular and amorous evaluation. Comparison with the notion of the acousmatic, a term introduced by Pierre Schaeffer to move towards a formal attention to the sonic object alone, can shed light on Barthes’s account of the voice. However, through a reading of the celebrated episode of the grandmother’s telephone call in Proust’s Recherche and its place in Barthes’s writing, I argue that for Barthes the voice bears a more radical acousmatisation since it is located beyond the phenomenal field and exists insofar as it has already disappeared.