Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

216narrative. The rose becomes the index of death and the whale becomes the index of ambergris.We have an imitation of the real rose, an imitation that can never render the original justicebecause by nature it is unauthentic and secondary. 64The supplementarity of language and the impossibility of representation refer to anabsent origina father in whose shadow lives all the supplements. Demonstrating the difficultyof comprehending the nature of the whale and the disappearance of its head, Ishmael admits hisfailure to give an explanation,dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if Iknow not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more, howcomprehend his face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, heseems to say, but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his backparts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face. (363; emphasismine)Hypothetically, to face the whale would be to face the father’s face and to face one’s own face.The inability to face the father’s face is, in fact, writing’s impossibility of finding its origin. Thepoint I want to raise here is that there is a missed encounter with this origin or referencebe itnational, literary, or even theoretical. Writing is here suspended between absence and presence,between the supplement and the text. However, the supplementary representation, Derrida argues,“approaches the origin as it distances itself from it. Total alienation is the total reappropriation ofself presence” (295). Yet, as Derrida states, the supplement supplements. It adds only to replaceand thus gives the illusion that it approaches the origin, when it only displaces it. It is adjunct andits place is not assigned as a presence; rather, it takes the place of an empty mark in the structure.To talk about the originthe Thingthrough the sign theory, is to accept the argument that the