Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

103The “phantom”, however, is a liar whose coming back to haunt the living works to leadastray the narrator’s haunted ego and to guarantee the unawareness and mystery of the secret. Infact, the lie is in the nature of a promise. Hawthorne’s dead ancestors and Surveyor Pue, hisliterary father, are given voice and figuratively disinterred through the use of the trope ofProsopopeia. In The Shell and the Kernel, Abraham and Torok posit that, “a ghost returns tohaunt with the intention of lying: its would-be ‘revelations’ are false by nature” (188). It returns,as such, as the phantasmal confirmation of hermeneutic ambivalence. As a result, Hester’s letter,like the remainders of Pue’s letter, remains an inscrutable sign. The letter cannot be deciphered; itcan only be recovered. Calling for interpretation, the letter is repeatedly restored and returned toits material origin. What returns, however, is always linked to desirethe desire to beremembered. Derrida points out that “one must always begin by remembering” (“Mnemosyne”35). Dead Surveyor Pue signs an agreement with Hawthorne to write him out of death. Definingsignatures in Hawthorne’s narrative becomes difficult because voices are mixed up. When awriter dies, his text is passed on to new authors who sign itan authenticating activityand, inturn, pass it on to new writers. Signing becomes an uncanny activity that doubles the text.Signature has a concealing and a canceling effect; it conceals a present signature and cancels aprevious one. When signed by Hawthorne, Pue’s narrative takes on new spectral dimensions. Infact, ghost writing is Oedipally determined. Only by bringing the dead to life, can livingHawthorne appropriate his literary father’s voice and transcend embrace his authority or whatHawthorne calls “filial duty”staged here by the event of the archive. The ghost in Hawthorne,however, is a living voice, speaking on behalf of the original author. In this sense, the author,unlike in the Barthesian paradigm, is not dead. The author never dies since authorship is handed