Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

921.3. Correspondence of Drives: Troubles of the Archive, Troubles of PsychoanalysisI like the dead, they are the doorkeepers who whileclosing one side “give” way to the other. (Hélène Cixous,Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing 7)Arkhé, we recall, names at once the commencement andthe commandment. (Derrida, Archive Fever 1)From the outset of “The Custom-House”, Hawthorne’s narrator declares that he has “anautobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing thepublic” (9). As autobiography, “The Custom-House” functions as a primal narrative scene. 27 Itsproject, however, is to elaborate a case history. Since every narrative needs an equivalent of aprimal scene in the larger, framing economy of origins and closures, “The Custom-House” goesback to something that is supposedly already writtenSurveyor Pue’s narrative. It appears as acanonical apparition on the horizon of The Scarlet Letter. Invested in the economy of ghostwriting, “The Custom-House” circles around the repetition of this hidden text in order to becomprehensible and authentic. J. Hillis Miller argues:Narration is the attempt to respond to the metaphysical injunction in the compulsion tobiography and autobiography. This is the obligation to bring people into the space ofimmediate presence where they may be. The demand for biography or autobiography isthe obligation to keep people in the open through writing. Such writing makes them enterthe general archives where all that we know is stored and kept available. (143-144)