Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

172diffusion of arrival (i.e., psychoanalytic cure) and destinerrance. Following Derrida’s theory ofdifférance, the letter in Moby-Dick indexes an empty space and fails to reach its destination. Thenovel keeps delaying the letter. Ahab and his crew meet the unavoidable letter (death). One mightsay that the letter from Hawthorne does not arrive until the famous scene of the doubloon. Yet,the narrative is haunted by Hawthorne’s poetics of the enigmatic long before this scene. Thechain of digressions keeps the letter roaming in the field of différance. This means that thenarrative itself can only occur proleptically.The letter can always not arrive at its destination and is thus involved in an endlessdestinerrance. As Miller points out, this endless delay is related to the à-venir, the will-to, the tocome,voice, and translatability. We have a turbulence of movements in Moby-Dick, withoutdestiny or destination. The moment the reader thinks the letter reaches its destination is themoment when the wind of destinerrance blows and delays the arrival of the letter. The point Iwant to raise here is that in every encounterand every encounter is a missed and spectralencounterit is as if one is encountering a ghost. 58Let us now return to investment of the business of the letter in the affect of fear andfascination. The double, let us not forget, expresses the fluctuation between the desire and thefear of the absolute resemblance with the other. Pygmalion, Prometheus, and Narcissus areexamples of this eternal circulation of fear and desire. Pushing desire to the limit is to arrive at thefact that there is no possible identification between the subject and the signifier. This is wherecatharsis takes place as the purification of desire. The Real, singular, can only be described whenthe double is no longer there. It follows, then, that the double is by nature different and unique. Inchapter 36, Ahab nails a gold coin to the mast, the center of the ship and the narrative, as a reward