Abstract

The aim of this work is to describe how the human speaking voice can be simultaneously present and absent to those who hear and listen. A significant portion of the work is devoted to a study of Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness with a focus on the character Kurtz who is described as "little more than a voice". As well, I investigate Maurice Merleau-Ponty's idea of "authentic speech" and how that relates to a phenomenon I describe as "speech projecting a world". In the last section of the thesis I confront some realist presuppositions about how we understand the meaning of the term "the world" in order to show that realism is inadequate. The work concludes with a consideration of the ontological and metaphysical implications of saying that the human voice in speech is both present and absent.