Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

150One of the main purposes of this chapter is to offer a tropo-psychoanalytics of theunderstanding of the figurations and configurations of the double. Like Narcissus, Melville’sheroes are interested in imagery, shadows, and doubles because they find it difficult to constructtheir identities without relying on an Other. What does Ahab reflect? What happens to thereflected image? Ahab sees himself as an other (the whale), thereby putting the Other en abymebut he also decomposes (s’abimer) in the Other’s realm and sees it as a dangerous abyss. Wehave an inter-change of mise en abyme and decomposition (s’abimer). The abyme of a work hostsmore than the specter of the author. As Derrida argues in his Specters of Marx:The specter, as its name indicates, is the frequency of a certain visibility. But the visibilityof the invisible. And visibility, by its essence, is not seen, which is why it remainsepekeina tes ousias, beyond the phenomenon or beyond being. The specter is also, amongother things, what one imagines, what one thinks one sees and what one projects—on animaginary screen where there is nothing to see. Not even the screen sometimes, and ascreen always has, at bottom, in the bottom or background that it is a structure ofdisappearing apparition. But now one can no longer get any shut-eye, being so intent towatch out for the return … The perspective has to be reversed, once again: ghost orrevenant, sensuous non-sensuous, visible-invisible, the specter first of all sees us. Fromthe other side of the eye, visor effect, it looks at us even before we see it or even beforewe see period. We feel ourselves observed, sometimes under surveillance by it evenbefore any apparition. (100-1)This Gothic relay of the specter and its invading the subject account for the duality that governsthe economics of ego-formationthe duality between the residual and the individual, betweenthe past and the present, between the heir and the legatee. Given that the trajectory of the spectermight involve a reversal of positions, it eventually exposes the encounter as a missed or