Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

40repeat 11 because it is only in making reference to trauma that repetition occurs. It is the subject’srefusal to meet the Real that allows repetition to re-occur. It requires no further argument to saythat automaton is linked to the domain of spontaneity and necessity as it is always alreadywritten, while the tuché is invested in the field of hazard and the missed encounteran encounterthat is not written. Although automaton and the tuché are interlaced, the tuché goes beyond theexpectations of the subject and freezes the moment of the encounter with the Real through arepetition of the network of signifiersa repetition that is doomed to miss that encounter. Lacansees the repetition compulsion in the persistence of the purloined letter in Poe’s story. Organizedby an accidental automaton, the various scenes of the purloined letter are repeated almostidentically in tandem while the tuché keeps missing the encounter with the letter, the content ofwhich is inaccessible.The relevance of this analysis to The Scarlet Letter is that it sheds light on the variousinvestitures of the letter. Striving to articulate the theoretical and narrative configurations of themissed encounter, this chapter makes recourse to anasemia to draw the contours of the primalscene. In his foreword to The Wolf Man’s Magic Word, Derrida divides anasemia 12 into threeelements: narrative, angle, and sepulcher. The narrativethe anasemic structuredescribes astory “as a path followed backward by the structure in order to reach all the way back beyond theorigin … The concept is re-cited in the course of this journey” (xxxiv). Anasemia creates also anangle “within the word itself” (xxxiv) and the significance of the word regresses to an originalmeaning. Anasemia, then, “diverts its account toward another event that takes place where it hasnever been … The anasemic account has an essential relation to a sepulcher. A fortiori in the case(of the Wolf Man) where the trauma did not take place only once: One can less than ever