Ambiguity of Origins and Archive as Prosthetic Memory: An Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s ‘A Tragedy of Two Ambitions’
Ambiguity of Origins and Archive as Prosthetic Memory: An Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s ‘A Tragedy of Two Ambitions’

Summary/Abstract: The article is an analysis of Hardy’s short story “A Tragedy of Two Ambitions”, in which a discourse on archive and memory is produced. The story is analyzed in terms of some commonalities between Derrida’s conception of archive in Archive Fever and Freud’s idea of totem in Totem and Taboo. Both critics highlight the ambiguity associated with the idea of origin and deal with the production of archive as an ongoing process, rather than a static relation with a supposedly original and monumental past. The story not only shows an ambiguous father figure, but also displays how his death is repressed and reproduced by means of a prosthetic archive. The analysis contributes to the literature produced on Hardy and comes up with slightly different results than some scholars who previously dealt with Hardy’s novels. For instance, this story does not conform to a binary opposition between a reliable mother figure and an impotent father figure; on the contrary, the story disposes of such binaries and displays a prosthetic archive that emerges from the ambiguity of mother and father figures. Additionally, the story does not focus on the distinction between memory and archive. On the contrary, it implies the impossibility of a “pure memory”.

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