Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

166description. My object here is simply to project the draught of a systematization of cetology. I amthe architect, not the builder. But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the Post-officeis equal to it” (139). This statement is related to the crowded pages of citations with which thebook begins. These citations, we should bear in mind, are drawn from the massive culturalarchive of the whale and are not “sorted” in any way whatsoever, but merely accumulated. In thissense Moby-Dick is a perfect example of letter writing and the postal effect this activity has onboth the reader and the characters. Literal correspondence of letters becomes the metaphor ofsymbolic exchange between the various poles of writing. The characters, narrator, and author ofMoby-Dick are charged with delivering different letters, and the entirety of the narrative dealswith the dangers and effects/affects of the postal activity.This postal work is explained by the logics of traumatic repetition: Ahab goes on a voyageto repeat his encounter with the White Whale; in the non-narrated (or disnarrated) originalencounter with the white whale, he suffers a trauma, and he consequently adopts the melancholicposition of knowing what object he has lost (his member, his leg) but not the Thing he has lost.The recirculation of the letterthe letter of the original trauma and Melville’s repetition ofHawthorne’s poetics of failed symbolsets up doubling, prosopopeia, and melancholy in termsof symbolization and failed symbolization. However, the recirculation of the letter is activated bywhat Žižek calls “the Bartleby politics”. Ahab “prefers to” relive and repeat the encounter withthe whale. “I would prefer not to”not to prefer is to prefer, as the saying goesbut does thisconformation, this yes to negation, ever refer to something else? To be able to prefer is not thesame as to be able not to prefer. This begs the question of the relation between the indicative (Iprefer) and the conditional (I would prefer). This fluctuation between the indicative and the