Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

276Symbolic. Their ghosts continue to enjoy their symptom and therefore to trouble the cohesivenessof the Symbolic, to invite its rupture. In fact, this is the difference between the ‘canonical’Hawthorne and Melville and their troubling status in relation to the Real. Surveyor Pue, forexample, is dead in the Real but appears in the Symbolic of the archive. He persists as a terrifyinggaze or symptom because he died before settling his symbolic debt, which he passes on toHawthorne who, in turn, passes it on to America. Once the debt is completely repaid – animpossibility -- the ghost or remnant ceases to inhabit the Symbolic. This is only a fantasy and itis always traversed by a reality that postpones settling the debt ad infinitum.Let us return to the Real of America. The American obsession with the Real which is,much like White Whale and the scarlet letter A, impossible to assimilate and define produces itsvery doppelganger which comes back to haunt the American Symbolic. Ahab’s figurativecastration, for example, explains his obsession with the Real of the material or corpo-Real. Thesame thing applies to Hester’s community’s obsession with corpo-Real inscriptions which markthe desire for the Real. However, this desire is of course not conscious. As the scarlet lettercontinues in its career to invite radically different and incompatible interpretations, it reflects theconscious determination of the reading subject to fix and to stabilize the import of the letter. Butsubtending all of this is the desire to enjoy the symptom: i.e., to return to the letter itsindeterminacy, and therefore to shove the Symbolic along its deathward path to the Real, and tothe collapse of signification and of the national Symbolic and of the Law. This is why Hester’swearing the scarlet letter could be said to function as a reflection of the obsession with the Real.This desire for the Real is present both in Moby-Dick and in The Scarlet Letter. This desire, as Ihave shown, is a desire for jouissance. The inscriptions on Queequeg’s body, the references to the