Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

204In fact, this name becomes an antonamasia when all it refers to is an inaccessiblereligious referent. Much like Oedipus, it refers to an abandoned child. He, like the othercharacters of the narrative, has to be remembered in terms of religious temporality. This religioustemporality gives the illusion of referentiality and demonstrates the illusions of symbolicpromise, and dismantles the symbol’s status. In other words, the narrative critiques, allegorically,the plethora of symbols it contains. The place of the narrator, however, is variable, changingaccording to the movement of the symbol. This means it is an intertextual transference, or, moreprecisely, an index that opens, through the use of allegory, new horizons of writing and reading.Likewise, the opening of the narrative with a doublethe two surveyors and the contingency ofnomination of Ishmael, animates the work of the signifier as it incessantly moves from theidentical to the different, or, in the economy of the narrative, from New York to the Pacific orfrom Ishmael to the Whale. And only through différance can the horizon of the origin begin toloom.According to Derrida, différance is a conjunction of “temporization” and “spacing” (09).The conjunction between the “spacing” and “temporization” in the approach to language isinterpreted by Derrida as an integral part of signification. By “spacing,” Derrida does not meanthe poetics of space, of course, but rather the interval or gap that is opened in various waysbetween the economy of the signifier and the impossible presence. When referring to somethingnot present, the sign is therefore, deferred presencesignification is the différance oftemporization. However, the sign is also defined in terms of what it is not compared to the otherelements of a system of differenceswhich is to say, signification is also the différance ofspacing. Derrida explains this overlapping in his “Différance”: