Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

91One of the anxieties of the The Scarlet Letter reader is to see, without being able to stop it, thescarlet letter A curve itself to form a cipher or a crypt through the act of repetition. It follows,then, that the semantic certitude that the reader seeks is always already put under erasure by theinterplay of past and presentin the dynamics of signification. The metonymic play of signs thatThe Scarlet Letter is structured around is a chain of signifiers that refer to one another withoutevoking a sense of beginning or end. The Scarlet Letter is incomplete, unfinished, and purloinedby hermeneutics. There is no clear arche or telos hence transforming interpretation intoimplicatures. The Scarlet Letter is abysmal and conceals many secrets. Without an organizingcenter and a referential origin, it adumbrates the Derridean deconstructive model. If, as I havesaid, the temporality of the letter operates in relation to the temporality of the subject, then thetemporality of signification makes meaningmuch like the work of the signatureconcealingand canceling, transferential and referential. The endless deferral of the meaning of the scarletletter A brings into question the notion of truth which is at the center of Western metaphysics.This means that the scarlet letter is a symptom. In fact, the scarlet letter A might be said to be thetrace of history that operates symptomatically precisely as trace. As such, it activates ourimpossible desire to grasp it.