Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

4allows the intrusion of the traumatic Real, thus constructing something that defies symbolization.In fact, the missed or lost origin does not precondition the Symbolic; rather, it is the Symbolicthat constructs the missed origin as impossibility. Since the missed encounter with the origin,Lacan tells us, amounts to the impossibility or failure of assimilating the Real, it is important toexplore its investitures in other discourses. Literature is one of the discourses in which the missedencounter exists. In fact, literature itself could be said to be missed encounter with reality andwith other discourses. Nineteenth-century American literature, the focus of this dissertation, isfull of examples of the various configurations of the missed encounter with that which escapessymbolization and containment. Often praised for its implication in discourses of the nation,progress, and democracy, 2 nineteenth-century American literature, and Hawthorne and Melvillein particular, display an obsession with the Thing. It will be one of main contentions of thisdissertation that the Realthe placeless, formless Thingbecomes the parasitic intervention inreality, an interference that disturbs and perturbs historical reality. It is this gap that ascertains thecontingency of history, and it is in this sense that the excess is uncanny. At every turning point oftime, the subject is confronted by an unforeseen gap, an erratic eruption; at such moments, as weshall see throughout this dissertation, the subject seeks refuge from the vicissitudes oftemporality. As suggested by Joan Copjec:The intrusion of the real makes it impossible for language to function literally. One wayof recognizing this is to say that the real marks the failure of the signifier. Language failsto designate literally what it wants to say. But it is precisely this failure that allows thesymbolic to grasp hold of some excess, some surplus existence over sense, over what itsignifies. This excess, which produced by language is not to be confused with a truebeyond, since the actual existence of this excess is not posited. (96)