Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

296it was literary/symbolic and only belatedly does it exemplify the over-proximity of/to theLacanian Real. The 9/11 events and the consequent war on terrorism signaled the eruption on theglobal scene of excesses, residues, and antagonisms that global capitalism has been unable toassimilate and contain. Consequently, as argued by Baudrillard and Paul Virilio, people havebecome absorbed by the hyper and virtual reality of media and cyberspace, thus murdering realityand blurring the distinctions between reality and the Real.The dominance of the Real over reality, simulacra over materiality, the signifier over thesignified evokes the prevalence of the signifier in our time. Violent as it is, the eruption of theReal means that what is construed and constructed in the Symbolic will slide toward andmaterialize itself in the Real. This ought to encourage us to reflect seriously upon the Lacanianand Derridean questions about the letter’s destination. We might say that the fever of literature’sletter is in reality the fever of the Law and the big Other. Talking about the violence of theSymbolic, and of literature in particular, we now may ask the question: What happens if the letterexplodes? It is a sort of letter bomb, as Peter Schwenger suggests in his book on the nuclear ageentitled Letter Bomb: Nuclear Holocaust and the Exploding Word. This question emphasizes therole that literary narrativeas a letterplays in shaping the current geopolitical scenes. Sinceany letter is a residuum of a former letter, are we left with a persistent residuethat which forLacan and Derrida is unassimilable and unrepresentablethat reflects and deflects our politicaland cultural remainders? To have a better grasp of the career of the career of this residue or stain,the strategy of Žižek’s ‘looking awry’ is necessary:A goal, once reached, always retreats anew. Can we not recognize in this paradox the verynature of the psychoanalytical notion of drive, or more properly the Lacanian distinction