Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

285this representation. What is important to bear in mind here is that many things can be discerned inthe excess of representation of the Other. Preeminent among these things stand the reversedrepresentation, vengeance, and resistance. The site of the double representation emerged in theSymbolic and moved to the Real and, ultimately, to reality. In other words, the violence of theSymbolic is also supplemented by the real effect of the Realmaterial damage, many deadbodies, and many letters (books). The inconclusive and unassimilable nature of this missedencounter, however, keeps it postponed and suspended in the abyss of the Imaginary andSymbolic.Hawthorne’s, Melville’s, and Said’s various accounts of America’s obsession with theReal, with wholeness and harmony, echoes my negotiating the ways in which the Real ofAmerica has become its realityan impossibility that has finally happened. This obsession, as Ihave explained, is invested in the libidinal economy of the missed encounter. This libidinalinvestiture is further complicated by the anxiety created by the proximity to/of the Other and thefear of losing one’s fantasy. The aspect of this proximity is manifested in the over-proximity tothe Real. For this particular reason, the symptom, which is but the residue of the failed encounterwith the Other, continues to haunt America. It requires no further argument to stress literature’sfunction as the archive of manqueor, perhaps, better yet, a fantasy of filling in this lack or gap.Thus the missed encounters, registered in literature, leave their trace in the form of anxiety orfantasy. Do not such fear and fascination structure Melville’s doubles, Hawthorne’stransgenerational project, and Said’s depiction of the encounter between the Occident and theOrient? What seems essential is the factbarely, if at all, studied by criticsthat the missedencounter concerns both lack and excess: it is in reality suspended between them.