Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

253evidence for the postmodern obsession with the gap that characterizes reality. In fact, theproximity of the Real engenders an increasing interest in materiality—in the body. This is whatexplicates the fixation of the gaze on the absent limba fixation that is provoked by the fear ofbeing engulfed by the rift and by the impossibility of seeing what lies in the hole. In The FourFundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan links the Real to absence: “The lack of the lackmakes the real, which emerges only there, as a cork. This cork is supported by the term of theimpossibleand the little we know about the real shows its antinomy to all verisimilitude” (ix).Translated into Melvillian language, the lack of lack would be that which is hollow:There’s a sight! There’s a sound! The greyheaded woodpecker tapping the hollow tree!Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See! that thing rests on two line-tubs, full oftow-lines. A most malicious wag, that fellow. Rat-tat! So man’s seconds tick! Oh! howimmaterial are all materials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts! Herenow’s the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign ofthe help and hope of most endangered life. A life-bouy of a coffin! Does it go further?Can it be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver!I’ll think of that. But no. So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side, thetheoretic bright one, seems but uncertain twilight to me. Will ye never have done,Carpenter, with that accursed sound? I go below; let me not see that thing here when Ireturn again. Now, then, Pip, we’ll talk this over; I so suck most wondrous philosophiesfrom thee! Some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds must empty into thee!”(494-495)This passage emblematizes the hollow and the holethe hole in the body, and the hole in theReal. The hole in the body and the hole in the Real, in sum, are conjoined in the psychiceconomy. It should be mentioned that, for psychoanalysis and for Lacan in particular, certain