Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

62(45). Performative as it is, the Puritan community’s decision that Hester wear the mark of shamefor the rest of her life forces the letter A to cite Puritan norms and laws.Perhaps we should understand the chiastic relationship between body and speech in lightof Butler’s Excitable Speech, which claims resistance is grounded in the body, and Derrida’s“Signature Event Context,” which is a deconstruction of Austen’s argument that a performativeutterance can only succeed if it remains within the confines of its contexts and authorialintentions. The letter A is reiterated and transplanted into a different context. The letter A is anindefinite article that resembles the Wolf Man who refers to himself as the unspeakable Thing“tieret.” The refusal of the Wolf Man to name himself is a rejection of the Name-of-the-Father.Much like the Wolf Man, Hester holds back from naming the Father. This citation transcends thehistorical context of the scarlet letter (17th century) and inscribes it in a timeless temporality.Dimmesdale’s illocutionary utterance: “I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinnerand fellow-sufferer! Be not silent for any mistaken pity and tenderness for him … What can thysilence do for him, except it tempt himyea, compel him, as it wereto add hypocrisy to sin?”is in fact a performative binding speech act that summons Hester to keep the secret. Talking abouthimself in the third person, Dimmesdale cites himself and distanciates himself, in the Brechtiansense of the word, from his name. “It is too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would thatI might endure his agony as well as mine,” responded Hester to Dimmesdale’s utterance (56).Hester’s utterance recites Dimmesdale’s citation and interpellation in a way that destabilizesPuritan patriarchal hegemony.Since language is a signifying chain stretching the utterance behind and beyond thespeaker, then, it is a mistake to assume the speaker is the only generator of meaning. However, a