Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

211signs that has many referents, many of which do not even exist. As Derrida argues in Writing andDifference:Everything begins with reproduction Always already: repositories of a meaning whichwas never present, whose signified is always reconstituted by deferral, nachträglich,belatedly, supplementarily: for the nachträglich also means supplementary. The call ofthe supplement is primary, here, and it hollows that which will be reconstituted bydeferral as the present. (266)The mode of reproductiona mise en scèneinscribes cetology in the realm of temporality. Thewhale, here, is both the letter and the pen. Its breathing rhythm resembles the structure of asentence, its movement leaves various traces on the surface of the water: “if you regard him veryclosely, and time him with your watch, you will find that when unmolested, there is anundeviating rhyme between the periods of his jets and the ordinary periods of respiration” (357-8). The “Cetology” chapter produces a figurative or analogic “resemblance” between two objects;the point of the analogy is an indirect one: that the periodicity of the whale’s spouting resemblesthe gradations of a sundial. So, the periodic temporality is thus re-imaged as a spatial mapping ofthat temporality: “when the sea is moderately calm, and slightly marked with spherical ripples,and this gnomon-like fin stands up and casts shadows upon the wrinkled surface, it may well besupposed that the watery circle surrounding it somewhat resembles a dial, with its style and wavyhour-lines graved on it” (142). Everything is supplemented in the narrative, even the writingitselfa writing that hides its origin and delays the beginning of events. Indeed, the White Whaleis a concept, or better, motif, or better still, temporal figure that connects silently with the other