Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

233phantasmic (mis)representation of the Other but also by the phantomatic residual repetition of thepast. To recover these restes and to guarantee the survival of the master signifier, a detourthrough the Other is essential. The point I want to raise is that a Lacanian manque and aDerridean différance are played out in the narratives of Hawthorne, Melville, and Said. In fact,there is a missed encounter between language and the subject, a missed encounter that lodges atthe same time a fear of the Other and a promise of jouissance.The second part of this chapter studies the shuttling between the materiality of the bodyand the Real of the body. Both The Scarlet Letter and Moby-Dick deal with the issue ofcommunicating trauma: on Hester’s chest, with Surveyor Pue’s remains, on the scaffold, Ahab’sivory leg, Queequeg’s tattoos, Ishmael’s text, on the Pequod, and between the lines of bothnarratives. We see that the characters have difficulty expressing their traumas in the Symbolic. Inboth narratives, there is only a corporeal materialization of trauma. Preoccupied with trauma andthe difficulty of representing it, both narratives function at the level of the Symbolic and deal withthe various symptoms of trauma and its corporeal manifestations. They explore the difficulties ofrepresenting trauma and the limitations of language within the Symbolic and the desire for a prelinguisticstate (this constitutes only part of the novels’ function as trauma narratives). Tounderstand the functioning of The Scarlet Letter and Moby-Dick as trauma narratives, we shouldstudy the excesses and residues that structure both narratives. Therein lies the libidinal strategy ofthe characters who function as the instrument of the Other’s jouissance. As Žižek asks, “ Do wenot find enjoyment precisely in fantasizing about the Other’s enjoyment, in this ambivalentattitude toward it? Do we not obtain satisfaction by means of the very supposition that the Otherenjoys in a way inaccessible to us?” (Tarrying with the Negative 206). It is my contention that the