<p>In the <i>Phenomenology of Perception</i>, Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes a young woman who loses her voice. Her aphonia defies both empiricist and intellectualist explanations and must, Merleau-Ponty argues, be understood as a transformation in her way of being-in-the-world with others; the possibilities that appear to a person who has a voice have ceased to appear to her. Drawing connections between Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the phantom limb and his discussion of this young woman, I develop an account of the voice as a power for experiencing grounds of conversation with others. Turning, then, to the work of S. Kay Toombs and to Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between “speaking” and “spoken” speech, I explore how our voices are vulnerable in conversation with others and several ways that we may respond to this vulnerability. I conclude by briefly considering how others’ inhabitation of conversational spaces can both enhance and endanger our own inhabitation of conversational space.</p>