Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

248and a kind of cultural domination, thus working within the dichotomous Western discourse thatemphasizes the superiority of the West.In this view, many postcolonial critics fail to see that the implausibility of reading andunderstanding the Oriental cipher might be linked to the Orient’s strategy of defense which favorshermeneutic puzzlement as a way to trouble the Western critic-imperialist’s assumptions aboutthe Orient. This conjunction of imperialism and criticisma fundamental aspect of Westernliterary traditionis suspended in the baffling Oriental text. It follows, then, that what isunreachable, uninterpretable, and unknowable would be considered strange, bizarre, and shouldbe subjected to Western scrutiny. The bafflement of the Western reader reflects the excess of theOriental figuresan excess which further complicates and inscribes the Western colonial projectin the realm of impossibility. Ahab, for example, claims to have understood the unearthly figureof the White Whale and to have had the creature captured. However, he ends up being disfiguredby that very strange figure. Dismembered and disfigured by the White Whale, Ahab allegorizesthe dismal ending of any person who thinks he is able to eliminate excess.In fact, Melville’s Moby-Dick and The Scarlet Letter confirm the authors’ concern for thecomplex assemblage where the body and politics, the unconscious and the historical are held in adifficult tension by the Symbolic. The affinities between their view of the body as the site ofinterpellation and jouissance and Lacan’s theory of subjectivity have been astutely underlined bypostmodern theorists such as Žižek, Agamben, and Deleuze and Guattari, especially in the case ofMelville’s Moby-Dick. Moby-Dick and The Scarlet Letter could be said to focus on therepresentation of the body, respecting the economy of an incessant shuttling between lack andexcess. Let us remember that this recurrent structure of the missed encounter between the two