The Secret of Sound in Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss and ask questions about the role and meaning of sound and voice in the constellation of language, writing, speech and listening in philosophy. I will reflect this in the thinking of two post-war philosophers and great literary voices both sensitive to sound: Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003) and Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). I would like to introduce a sense of sound existing on the outskirts of experience in silence, folding almost as a secret, that is inspired by Alice Lagaay’s notion for the need of philosophy of voice. Especially in the landscape of (writing a) disaster interrelations between art and philosophy become the most visible addressing ways of meaning and meaning-making, experience and ontological presumptions behind any storytelling and writing. What could sound mean for philosophy?