Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

275fantasies. What we are witnessing today are, rather, clashes within each civilization. As Žižekargues in The Desert of the Real, “[t]his notion of the ‘clash of civilizations’, however, must berejected out of hand: what we are witnessing today are, rather, clashes within each civilization”(41). The terrorist, for example, is but a reflection of the failure of the systema system thatcannot contain the surplus it created. The fantasy figure is there to cover over the failure of thesystem to fill in the gaps. As Žižek and Agamben argue, the impossibility of existence of aharmonious system finds its resolution in the insistence of the need to invent the Other to fill inthe gap or void that lies in the center of the system. This is what Žižek means when he argues that“[i]n ‘traversing the fantasy,’ we find jouissance in the vicious cycle of circulating around thevoid of the (missing object), renouncing the myth that jouissance has to be amassed somewhereelse” (The Plague of Fantasies 33).According to the Lacanian psychoanalytic model, the Other is structured around anabyss or a manque. The entry into the Symbolic, in Lacanian parlance, is followed by thesubmission to the Law. What is barred from Subject is the residue of the material body, or thematerialization of jouissance. Material jouissance is in conflict with the immaterial nature of theSymbolic. This is why to enter the Symbolic and to be recognized necessitates that jouissance beabandoned. To enter the Symbolic, in other words, is to kill the Thing. Lacan and Derrida havetaught us that there remains always a residue and that, to follow their line of argument, jouissanceis not utterly evacuated. This is why the Other is said to be lacking jouissancea lack that lies inlanguage and in the very essence of the Symbolic. Such argument is in line with Žižek’sargument that we only die twice: once in the Real and once in the Symbolic. In other words,Hawthorne, Melville, and Said, although dead in the Real of America, continue to live in its