Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

182The relationship between signs necessarily contains a consecutive temporal element; itremains necessary, if there is to be allegory, that the allegorical sign refer to another signthat precedes it. The meaning constituted by allegorical sign can then consist only inrepetition (in the Kierkegaardian sense of the term) of a previous sign with which it cannever coincide, since it is of the essence of this previous sign to be pure anteriority. (207)Such anteriority refers to the supplementarity of representation and language. Derrida’s argumentin “White Mythology” that thinking about metaphor takes place as a thinking through metaphorshapes my argument that thinking about repetition takes place through repetition. To assign ameaning to a signifier is to kill its ability to signify. Signifying, according to the deconstructiveschool, is the endless play of language. In “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of theHuman Sciences,” Derrida writes: “Everything became discourse . . . everything became a systemwhere the central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely presentoutside a system of differences. The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domainand the interplay of signification ad infinitum (249). The White Whale, however, is a signifierthat refers back to other signifiers. In fact, it is an elusive signifier that denies any definition, it is“the one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last” (Moby-Dick 262). TheWhite Whale, much like the scarlet letter, is made up of two signifiers, but their combinationproduces a literary image that, I would argue, desires symbolic transcendence but collapses intoallegory. Like the Orientals, it is described in a grotesque defamiliarized way. The White Whale’s“nameless horror” (189) evokes the danger the Western traveler might face in the seeminglypeaceful Orient. Like the Orient, the White Whale is associated with the sublime, “for all theseaccumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an