Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

143Structured around repetition, the narrative gestures toward an unassimilable trauma, thatof the non-narrated traumatic encounter between Ahab and the White Whale. Although Ahabrecovered from the injury caused by the whale, he projects onto the whale his own psychicfrustration and instabilities. The psychic and affective tumult that is Ahab’s experience is, as Ishall explain in due course, heavily precipitated by the prosopoetic business of the double, thevery conundrum of trauma, which is to say, the missed encounter, that which remainsungraspable. The reason why the double is feared is its investment in the unknown and theunfamiliarthings that have long haunted Ahab. Moby-Dick, however, reveals the internal originof the double. The great double in the novel is sustained between Ahab and the whale. Thecharacters are, I shall explain, precipitated by the intractable and untraceable prosopoetic detoursof the double in the route to subject formation. It follows then that Melville’s narrative portraysconversations not only between the ego and the double/other but also between the ego and ego asother/double. This is why, in order for us to understand the career of the double, it is veryimportant to secularize the double and bring it into dialogue with Melville’s text and context.Only through a chiasmatics of presence and absence and the psycho-poetics of exchange can weunderstand the surge of the double in the psyche of the characters. The reason why the double isfeared is its investment in the unknown and the unfamiliarthings that have long haunted man.Melville’s probing into the inner self and his philosophical questions regarding existenceand the unknown spark the emergence of the compelling theoretical question: what makes ashadow? Ishmael’s statement, “Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my truesubstance” (53), his claim that “the shadow often goes back” (142), his description of the White