Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

24of the Puritan fathers. It is the archival event per se. In this respect, the contribution of thepsychoanalytic model to a novel interpretation of the The Scarlet Letter consists, I think, ingiving the residues of the Puritan fathers a material and psychic significance. Applying Freud’smodel of narrative, Derrida’s theory of the trace, and Lacan’s concept of the missed encounter,this chapter places the emphasis on the temporality of the sign and the subjecta temporality thatstages, while accentuating the performative nature of the sign (the letter) and on the ability of thesubject, as we shall see through Butler and Althusser, to resist, re-signify, and (re)cite, the belatedimpact of trauma. However, the psychoanalytic economy of the missed encounter is, I amtempted to say, an economy that is based on the management of the excess (surplus) of the crypt,the residue that inhabits the space of anasemia and on filling in the gaps left by the catachresticmaneuvers of the scarlet letter. This shuttling between anasemia (arche)be it material,prosopoetic, psychological, or ideologicaland the future (will-to) defines the narratives of bothHawthorne and Melville.Parallel to my exploration of the issue of the missed encounter in The Scarlet Letter, forexample, I shall investigate the temporality of the sign and the subject. In the temporal matrix ofrepetition, there is a series of traumas that unwittingly re-enact the primal trauma, which is lost inthe mists of time (and available for witnessing only by the prosopoetics of exhumation). WhatDimmesdale knows, therefore, is only what he understands as sin. His sin of fornication re-enactswhat he understands, in his Christian system, as the Fall. Dimmesdale’s understanding of theinitiatory trauma is as “blind,” as Chillingworth’s who says to Hester: “My old faith, longforgotten, comes back to me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. By thy first step awryyou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment it has all been a dark necessity” (129). But