Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

215the dialectics of poison and remedy, absence and presencedoubles that supplement one anotherwithout ever fusing. Ambergris is also related to death. This relates writing to death. In seeingambergris as a precious commodity generated by disease and putrification, one can argue thatwriting is but the double of deatha repetition of death. The pharmakon evokes also paintingand representation. Painting and writing are in fact two techniques of mimesis and both of themare invested in the theory of the double. Painting, like writing and any other form ofrepresentation, is the representation of the living. We have learnt that any attempt to represent theWhite Whale is doomed to fail. Even Ishmael’s attempt to paint the monster with words fails atthe end.These mimetic techniques, according to the Platonic paradigmatic mode, areunambiguously dissociated from reality. Writing is at many removes from reality because,cryptomimetically inhabited by ghosts and residues, it does not offer any genuine image ofspeech; rather, it creates a different reality. These mimetic techniques are but shadows that maskdeath by the giving it the appearance of the living. When the Pequod meets the Rose-Bud inchapter 91, we see the pharmakon at work. The name given to the ship “Bouton-de-Roses”“romantic name of this romantic ship”is very ironic and does not reflect the badsmells that come from it. The Rose-Bud’s “upper part … was carved in the likeness of a hugedrooping stalk, was painted green, and for thorns had copper spikes projecting from it here andthere; the whole terminating in a symmetrical folded bulb of a bright red color” (386). Like therepresentation of the White Whale, the representation of the rose is doomed to fail. Stubb “criedwith his hand to his nose, ‘that will do very well; but how like all creation it smells!’”(386) Herethe name does not match the smell of the cadaver. Again, the pharmakon effect saturates the