Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

160metaphysical, but we are left with the ineffable material world and the detritus of history. Rather,the representation of the White Whale is always at odds with its substance. Like Keats Grecianurn, it is silent. It cannot respond to Ahab’s, Ishmael’s, our desire to fix a certain meaning,because nothing is inherent to it. Like the scarlet letter, it is the zero degree of the signifier. Is theWhite Whale substantial, or “is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voidsand immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation,when beholding the white depths of the milky way?” (196; emphasis mine). Lifting the verb “toshadow forth,” which connotes allegory, from Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter which is full ofshadows and doubles, Melville inscribes Moby-Dick in the realm of différance. The verb “toshadow forth” is thus a means of connecting the shadow with the event of writingofconnecting, that is concept and process.What we have is a haunting alliance of author, narrator, and charactersan alliance thatproduces an endless mise en abyme. However, this mise en abyme is also related to the author’smetaphorical decomposition (s’abimer). This decomposition is the result of the postal effect andwriting under the shadow of Hawthorne. Derrida brilliantly explains the dangers of representationin his Of Grammatology:Representation mingles with what it represents, to the point where one speaks as onewrites, one thinks as if the represented were nothing more than the shadow or reaction ofthe representer. A dangerous promiscuity and a nefarious complicity between thereflection and the reflected which lets itself be seduced narcissistically. In this play ofrepresentation, the point of origin becomes ungraspable. There are things like reflectingpools, and images, an infinite reference from one to the other, but no longer a source, aspring [source]. There is no longer simple origin. For what is reflected is split in itself and