Contents -- Overture -- 1. Philosophy and the Arrogation of Voice -- 2. Counter-Philosophy and the Pawn of Voice -- The Metaphysical Voice -- Worlds of Philosophical Difference -- Pictures of Destruction -- Derrida's Austin and the Stake of Positivism -- Exclusion of the Theory of Excuses: On the Tragic -- Exclusion of the Theory of the Non-Serious -- Skepticism and the Serious -- Two Pictures of Communication: Assigning -- What (Thing) Is Transmitted? Austin Moves -- Two Pictures of Language in Relation to (the) World -- Three Pictures of My Attachment to My Words: Signing -- 3. Opera and the Lease of Voice -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Subject Index -- Name Index.