Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

61very eye that would gloat over it” (143). The Thing’s abjection as the un-named, indefinite bodywhose will is held by a non-negotiable something.The Scarlet Letter is replete with corporeal images. The body and the text are sheermattera Thingof which the corpse is the remainder. The Scarlet Letter is a narrative that isfull of bodies that matter. In this sense, we have bodies that are reduced to matter (bones anddust) that speak prosopoetically, and bodies that materialize under the law and in relation to theletter. I want to demonstrate, drawing upon Butler’s conception of performativity andcitationality, Derrida’s theory of language, Lacan and Freud’s theories of the sign, and Foucault’stheory of power and knowledge, that iterability cannot be limited and that it forms the subject’sagency within the lawthe possibility of subverting the system from within. The letter A couldbe read as a citation, 18 the iterability of which cannot be controlled by the author’s intentions and,as a result, it is impossible to wrap it in any context. The A is a citation that records Hester’smovement from a social outcast to an active social agent. However, citation misfires thepossibility of reaching the originbe it the author, the arche-text, or the sign. The events in thenarrative are created as affects of various citationseffects that are spiraling around a past thatcannot be presented to the scene of writing. Like Derrida, Butler is interested in the non-explicitperformative (what Derrida calls citational utterance). Since language is performative by nature,the act of naming or hailing is a discursive act that is performative. To declare that Hester shouldwear the mark of her shame is not a neutral act of description but a performative declaration thatinterpellates her. “fully revealed before the crowd,” Hester holds her baby closer to her bosom inan attempt to hide the letter A“one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another”