Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

152of the missed encounter, but also because of their relevance to the work of Melville and to theunderstanding of the functions of the missed encounter in nineteenth-century American literature,and more particularly the current debate over the missed encounter between the Occident and theOrientwhich is the focus of my third chapter.The point I want to raise is that the impossible encounter between the double, which is atonce symbolic and that which contests the Symbolic Order and slides toward the Real, andsymbolization, or rather the impossible duplication of the Real, structures the economy of thenarrative and activates the recurrent trauma of the characters. To study this impossible encounter,let us consider some of the effects that define the recurrent trauma of the characters. Therelationship between the subject and its double is also governed by another duality of desire andhorror. Initially, Ishmael and Queequeg, different as they seem, have a relationship of desire andfear. Ishmael was “as much afraid of [Queequeg] as if it was the devil himself who had brokeninto [his] room at the dead of night. In fact, [he] was so afraid of him that [he] was not gameenough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemedinexplicable in him” (40). Ishmael’s fear is associated with his not knowing Queequeg (theOther). As Sedgwick observes in “Privilege of Unknowing,” ignorance circulates as powerfullyas knowledge because it is a knowledge formation: “Insofar as ignorance is ignorance of aknowledgea knowledge that may itself, it goes without saying, be seen as either ‘true’ or ‘false’under some other regime of truththese ignorances, far from being pieces of the originary dark,are produced by and correspond to particular knowledges and circulate as part of particularregimes of truth” (25). Then, Ishmael’s ignorance and fear turn into fascination and desire. Hesays, “Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg’s arm thrown over me in the