Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

197This invitation is open, sudden, and binding. The reader has no choice but to accept it. The firstsentence of the narrative, written in the imperative mode, establishes an intimacy with the readerand announces the first person point of view. Ishmael’s problematic status as a first-personnarrator invites us to investigate the indexation of the narrative. The name chosen by the narratorhums with religious significance. The injunction “call me Ishmael” lends the narrative a powerand binds the reader to follow the command of the narrator. Although the imperative suggestsauthority and obedience, it is also an invitation to a greater intimacy and equality. In fact, Ishmaelis a pseudo-narrator, a puppet controlled by another agentthe ghost or the double.Like the letter, desire can be lost, deferred, or can go astray, producing a counter effect. Itshould be noted that, besides signifying the letter’s arrival or not, the postal affect also conjuresthe “-post” effect, i.e., belated, or post-traumatic (in the wake of the event). When a letter isrelayed or delayed, it becomes haunted by the various ghosts that happen to read it and thereforeit can signify differently according to the law of the ghost and not the original sender. Thegrounding of the relay of the letter in hauntology and the performative could be explained byAbraham and Torok’s volume of essays The Shell and the Kernel: Renewals of Psychoanalysis inwhich the concept of the transgenerational phantom is seen as a gap in the psyche engendered bya transgenerational secret. Who is the addressee of Moby-Dick? My argument is that the narrativeaddresses the dead, the living, and those to be born. Derrida’s statement, “If I say that I write fordead addressees, not dead in the future but already dead at the moment when I get to the end of asentence, it is not in order to play" (33), applies to Moby-Dick in the sense that its unusualnarrative structure and the corporeality of Ishmael’s narrative voice subject the narrativeaghostly letterand its sender(s) and receiver(s) to the Derridean postal effect. The relationship