Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

41dispense with a narrative account” (xxxiv; original emphasis). Going back to the dead father’ssepulchers is in fact the tracing back of the anasemic interpretation of the crypt.I shall examine the psychoanalytic, deconstructive contexture in which the issue of “themissed encounter” is posed. In other words, this chapter situates Hawthorne at the juncture oftrauma theory, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction. Trauma theory, as articulated by Freud andCaruth, is very important to the understanding of a narrative. With Lacan, we reach the point atwhich we are left to stare into the face of the missed or impossible encounter which is said tosuspend the subject between two impossible choices – two missed encounters: (1) to know his/hersuffering and therefore to repeat it or (2) not to know and to forget. My project addresses thefunction of the missed encounter in trauma writing. The missed encounter and trauma writing areboth based on repetitiona repetition that centers on the temporality of the subject and writing.The temporality, however, is tied to impossibility. This impossibility drives the subject beyondthe Real to a failed or missed encounter with the insufficiency of knowing his/her suffering.Placing the traumatic experience beyond representation and the materiality of experience andsignification, one misses the ethical dimension of trauma. According to Lacan, it is theunreadability of the missed encounter which forms the essence of trauma. He argues that “themissed encounter” that structures the temporality of trauma is a failed encounter with the“timeless” Real. Structured around the repetition of the subject’s traumatic primal scenes,psychoanalysis studies the missed encounterthe primal scene—as a missed event. According topsychoanalysis, the traumatic primal scene is an impossible scene that, forever missed andforgotten, determines the repetitive structure of trauma. I shall argue that the real event is not onlyreproduced in repetitions but also in aporias and absences, in the archive, and in the act of