Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

258This regression to the liminal space between the Symbolic and the Imaginary signals thelimitation of the symbolic exchangean exchange that circles around a certain différance andrepetition compulsionand invests their letters in the thriving economy of the missed encounter.Hawthorne’s transhistorical projecthis anxiety about the impossibility of communicating withthe dead fathers and his inability to assimilate their primal scenesexpresses his libidinal desireto recover the lost Real. Unable to step outside the burning contours of the archive and unable torecover the Father, despite his attempts to figure the Father tropically, Hawthorne is thrown in thedarkness of the Real. Fixing a rendez-vous with the Father seems to exist only as function of theletter as it circulates in the community and as it circles around the spiral movement of différance.Yearning for pre-symbolic unity with the fathers, Hawthorne’s regressive fantasy is traversed bythe trajectory of différance that consigns it to the economy of the impossible Real. As suggestedby Lacan in his Four Fundamental Concepts, “the impossible is not necessarily the contrary ofthe possible, or, since the opposite of the possible is certainly the real, we would be lead to definethe real as impossible” (167). It would be hard to miss the similarity between Hawthorne’stranshistorical project and Lacan’s conception of identity: the subject is constructed around anaporia, which is to say, around the Real or the impossible territory that breaks out of the limits ofrepresentation. The transhistorical project, much like Ahab’s mythological journey to repeat theprimal encounter with the whale, calls attention to the impossible of language, the Real oflanguage.If we follow Lacan’s argument about the impossibility of the Real and that about thepetrifying gaze, we realize that Hawthorne’s fantasy is not so much about the encounter per se asit is about the gaze – that is, the gaze as the only possible remainder of the missed encounter.