3.17.2006
Time and Narrative, vol. 1, 2, 3 (Narrative)
Title
Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative, vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative, vol. 2. Chicago: Universty of Chicago Press, 1985.
Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative, vol. 3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Field
Narrative
Summary
The three volumes of this work are an exhaustingly detailed proof (or is it? ah we shall see) of this admitedly, and yet productively, tautological hypothesis: "time becomes human time to the extent that it is organized after the manner of a narrative; narrative, in turn, is meaningful to the extent that it portrays the features of temporal experience." (3, vol.1) This set up begins with the opposition of Augustine's struggle with the aporetic quality of time in his discussion of eternity in the Confessions that brings forth an idea of distended time, a present of the past, a present of the present, and a present of the future (a tri-partate present) versus Aristotle's concept of emplotment and mimesis. It is through the movement of mimesis through time (which Ricoeur divides into mimesis1 - prefiguration, mimesis2 - configuration, mimesis3 - refiguration - more on this later) that we get the bridging of Augustine's time and Aristotle's movement (sorta like time and narrative but both exploded out a bit). This gets put aside as other ingredients are prepared - section 2 (not volume 2) deals with history and narrative - a set up for later discussions of fiction and narrative. He is basically saving narrative for history here - "My thesis rest on the assertion of an indirect connection of derivation, by which historical knowledge proceeds from our narrative understanding without losing anything of its scientific ambition." (92, vol 1) He discusses the arguments of the two schools against narrative history (and against each other) French historiography (towards a social history) and logical positivism (scientific method and general laws of history). He then looks at the attempts of a defense of narrative history, finds them lacking (but still basing his arguments upon them) and posits his own premised on emplotment: "the dynamic character of emplotment is restored through its character of traditionality, even if its generic character is the only one considered. What is more, this trait is counterbalanced by the continuity that the notion of historiographical style reestablishes between chronicle, the chain of motifs, plot, argument, and ideological implication. This is why we may...take emplotment as the operation that dynamizes every level of narrative articulation. Emplotment is much more than one level among many. It is what brings about the transition between narrating and explaining." (168, vol. 1) Next we have a look at the paradox that arises from historical intentionality ("the historian's profession, the epistemology of the historical sciences, and genetic phenomenology combine their resources to reactivate that fundamental noetic vision of history - historical intentionality." (229, vol. 1) This has to do with causality, I think, and that is located in mimesis2. The paradox arises from "the median position of narrative configuration between that which comes before and that which comes after the poetic text. This narrative operation already presents the opposing features that are sharpened in historical knowledge. On the one hand, it emerges out of the break that sets up the kingdom of the plot and splits it off from the order of real action. On the other hand, it refers back to the understanding immanent in the order of action and to the prenarrative structures stemming from real action." (180, vol. 1) Here we get one of the big aporias that the poetics of narrative could cover over - the gap between lived time and historical time (I think - more on this later). There is some talk here about quasi-events as the events of history (I think this will link up with questions of truth telling and the historical project).
Ok so on to volume 2, which is about narrative and fiction - fiction unlike history is not part of a truth telling project. Ricoeur's goal for this volume is this: "by broadening, radicalizing, enriching, and opening up to the outside the notion of emplotment, handed down by the Aristotelian tradition, I shall attempt correlatively to deepen the notion of temporaity handed down by the Augustinian tradition, without at the same time moving outside the framework provided by the notion of narrative configuration, hence without crossing over the boundaries of mimesis2." (4, vol 2) So basically, in this slim volume which deals with Woolf, Proust, Mann (all tales about time) we get the mimesis2 aspect of imagination and style that is different from the historical quasi-truth event. (again, I think - I am never sure what the hell I am talking about when it comes to this book, really) There is a lot of semiotics in this volume, grammar and tenses and configuration (and refiguration) play an important role - this is going to get us to the important aspect of mediation (which is already at play given the central importance of mimesis in his theory) by the reader in vol 3. There is a lot of "traditional" narrative theory key words - voice, character, etc. the pointing out that time in the novel does not correspond to calender time - and this is the tipping point for the entire reconfiguration of time through narrative that Ricouer is seeking to prove. So why did we get these seperate discussions of history and fiction in volumes one and two? "The problem of the refiguration of time by narrative will, therefore, be brought to its conclusion only when we shall be in a position to make the respective referential intentions of the historical narrative and the fictional narrative interweave. Our analysis of the fictive experience of time will at least have marked a decisive turning point in the direction of the solution to this problem that forms the horizon of my investigation, by providing something like a world of the text for us to think about, while awaiting its complement, the life-world of the reader, without which the signification of the literary world is incomplete." (160, vol. 2)
So volume 3, the scene of this interweaving (and beyond). It starts by reiterating some battles of the titans we have seen before (Augustine and Aristotle), but adds to the mix Husserl vs. Kant and Heidegger vs. I guess everyone including Heidegger. Let's set this aside (just as Ricouer does) to test out the interweaving of fiction and history. Through this we get a discussion of cosmological time (calenders, archives and generations) all of which deal with trace - "the trace is thus one of the more enigmatic instruments by which historical narrative 'refigures' time. It refigures time by contructing the junction brought about by the overlapping of the existential and the empirical in the significance of the trace." (126, vol. 3) Then we have fiction and phenomenological time - the way time is experienced, not always linear or progressive, but thick and weird. And then the question of truth and history (already hinted at). Also reading as the fusing of the time of the text and the time of the world (the reader). So bascially this interweaving comes about this way: "the interweaving of history and fiction in the refiguration of time rests, in the final analysis, upon this reciprocal overlapping, the quasi-historical moment of fiction changing places with the quasi-fictive moment of history. This interweaving, this reciprocal overlapping, this exchange of places, originates what is commonly called human time, where the standing-for the past in history is united with the imaginative variations of fiction, against the background of the aporias of the phenomenology of time." (192, vol 3)
Ok, so this interweaving brings us back to the original question: how does the poetics of narrative fill in for the aporias of time? We can now see how all the battles were each a reckoning with aporetic time (well, we could see this the entire time, but it all being scraped together here at the end). And that at the end there is an even more fundamental aporia to reckon with: "It has to do with the ultimate unrepresentability of time, which make even phenomenology continually turn to metaphors and to the language of myth, in order to talk about the upsurge of the present or the flowing of the unitary flux of time." (243, vol 3) This is how the aporetic inevitability (and the circularity of the argument) are productive. So the first aporia we see being tussled over is that of phenomenological time and cosomological time. We see that Augustine and Aristotle deal with it either by stretching time (pure mind) or stretching movement (pure movement). THis does really work. Husserl comes in with a phenomenology bounded by hyletics - this doesn't work either. (because it is hyletic it has to borrow from the material) Kant tries the reverse, doesn't work either. Then we have Heidegger, whose use of Care in Being does kinda work, but produces more aporias. The same goes for the aporia of the totality of time. Of these two aporias, Ricouer says, "we can say that narrativity does not offer the second aporia of temporality as adequate a response as it offered to the first aporia. This inadequacy will not be seen as a failure if we do not lose sight of the following two maxims. First, the reply of narrativity to the aporias of time consists less in resolving these aporias than in putting them to work, in making them productive. This is how thinking about history contributes to a refiguration of time. Second, any theory reaches its highest expression only when the exploration of the domain where its validity is verified is completed with a recognition of the limits that circumscribe this domain of validity." (261, vol 3) The final aporia is of course, as mentioned, the unrepresentability of time. But in closing, Ricouer reminds us that even as these came one after another, as did the solutions ("solutions") posed by the poetics of narrative, not to look at these as bounded chains or progressions that must be followed, but rather as productive constellations. "The mystery of time is not equivalent to a prohibition directed against language. Rather it gives rise to the exigence to think more and to speak differently. If such be the cause, we must pursue to its end the return of movement, and hold that the reaffirmation of the historical consciousness within the limits of its validity requires in turn the search, by individuals and by communities to which they belong, for their respective narrative identities. Here is the core of our whole investigation, for it is only withint this search that the aporetics of time and the poetics of narrative correspond to each other in a sufficient way." (274, vol 3)
Keywords
Narrative, Time, Aporia, History, Fiction, Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, Tradition, Configuration, Refiguration, Mimesis, Imagination, Mediation.
Other Thoughts
"This disastrous consequence [the forgetting of human time] can be avoided only if an analogy is preserved between the time of individuals and the time of civilizations: the analogy of growth and decline, of creation and death, the anology of fate. This analogy on the level of temporality is of the same nature as the analogy I tried to maintain on the level of procedures between causal attribution and emplotment, and then on the level of entities between societies (or civilizations) and the characters of drama. In this sense, all change enters the field of history as a quasi-event." (224, vol 1)
"Our analysis of the act of reading leads us to say rather that the practice of narrative lies in a thought experiment by means of which we try to inhabit worlds foreign to us. In this sense, narrative exercises the imagination more that the will, even though it remains a category of action." (249, vol. 3)
"In this sense, narrative already belongs to the ethical field in virtue of its claim - inseperable from its narration - to ethical justice. Still it belongs to the reader, now an agent, an initiator of action, to choose among the multiple proposals of ethical justice brought forth by reading. It is at this point that the notion of narrative identity encounters its limit and has to link up with the nonnarrative components in the formation of an acting subject." (249, vol. 3)
There is an excellent summary of these works, much much better than mine mainly because I was pretty lost during most of the Heidegger and Husserl sections, can be found here
Other QE Works Cited
Aristotle, Poetics, Selections (Narrative)
Bakhtin, M. The Dialogic Imagination (Narrative)
Barthes, R. Image-Music-Text (Narrative)
Barthes, R. Writing Degree Zero (Narrative)
Benjamin, W. Illuminations (Film and Media Studies)
Chatman, S. Story and Discourse (Narrative)
Genette, G. Narrative Discourse (Narrative)
Meleau-Ponty, M. Phenomenology of Perception (History and Theory of the Body)
Cohn, D. Transparent Minds (Narrative)
Rimmon-Kenan, S. Narrative Fiction (Narrative)
Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative, vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative, vol. 2. Chicago: Universty of Chicago Press, 1985.
Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative, vol. 3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Field
Narrative
Summary
The three volumes of this work are an exhaustingly detailed proof (or is it? ah we shall see) of this admitedly, and yet productively, tautological hypothesis: "time becomes human time to the extent that it is organized after the manner of a narrative; narrative, in turn, is meaningful to the extent that it portrays the features of temporal experience." (3, vol.1) This set up begins with the opposition of Augustine's struggle with the aporetic quality of time in his discussion of eternity in the Confessions that brings forth an idea of distended time, a present of the past, a present of the present, and a present of the future (a tri-partate present) versus Aristotle's concept of emplotment and mimesis. It is through the movement of mimesis through time (which Ricoeur divides into mimesis1 - prefiguration, mimesis2 - configuration, mimesis3 - refiguration - more on this later) that we get the bridging of Augustine's time and Aristotle's movement (sorta like time and narrative but both exploded out a bit). This gets put aside as other ingredients are prepared - section 2 (not volume 2) deals with history and narrative - a set up for later discussions of fiction and narrative. He is basically saving narrative for history here - "My thesis rest on the assertion of an indirect connection of derivation, by which historical knowledge proceeds from our narrative understanding without losing anything of its scientific ambition." (92, vol 1) He discusses the arguments of the two schools against narrative history (and against each other) French historiography (towards a social history) and logical positivism (scientific method and general laws of history). He then looks at the attempts of a defense of narrative history, finds them lacking (but still basing his arguments upon them) and posits his own premised on emplotment: "the dynamic character of emplotment is restored through its character of traditionality, even if its generic character is the only one considered. What is more, this trait is counterbalanced by the continuity that the notion of historiographical style reestablishes between chronicle, the chain of motifs, plot, argument, and ideological implication. This is why we may...take emplotment as the operation that dynamizes every level of narrative articulation. Emplotment is much more than one level among many. It is what brings about the transition between narrating and explaining." (168, vol. 1) Next we have a look at the paradox that arises from historical intentionality ("the historian's profession, the epistemology of the historical sciences, and genetic phenomenology combine their resources to reactivate that fundamental noetic vision of history - historical intentionality." (229, vol. 1) This has to do with causality, I think, and that is located in mimesis2. The paradox arises from "the median position of narrative configuration between that which comes before and that which comes after the poetic text. This narrative operation already presents the opposing features that are sharpened in historical knowledge. On the one hand, it emerges out of the break that sets up the kingdom of the plot and splits it off from the order of real action. On the other hand, it refers back to the understanding immanent in the order of action and to the prenarrative structures stemming from real action." (180, vol. 1) Here we get one of the big aporias that the poetics of narrative could cover over - the gap between lived time and historical time (I think - more on this later). There is some talk here about quasi-events as the events of history (I think this will link up with questions of truth telling and the historical project).
Ok so on to volume 2, which is about narrative and fiction - fiction unlike history is not part of a truth telling project. Ricoeur's goal for this volume is this: "by broadening, radicalizing, enriching, and opening up to the outside the notion of emplotment, handed down by the Aristotelian tradition, I shall attempt correlatively to deepen the notion of temporaity handed down by the Augustinian tradition, without at the same time moving outside the framework provided by the notion of narrative configuration, hence without crossing over the boundaries of mimesis2." (4, vol 2) So basically, in this slim volume which deals with Woolf, Proust, Mann (all tales about time) we get the mimesis2 aspect of imagination and style that is different from the historical quasi-truth event. (again, I think - I am never sure what the hell I am talking about when it comes to this book, really) There is a lot of semiotics in this volume, grammar and tenses and configuration (and refiguration) play an important role - this is going to get us to the important aspect of mediation (which is already at play given the central importance of mimesis in his theory) by the reader in vol 3. There is a lot of "traditional" narrative theory key words - voice, character, etc. the pointing out that time in the novel does not correspond to calender time - and this is the tipping point for the entire reconfiguration of time through narrative that Ricouer is seeking to prove. So why did we get these seperate discussions of history and fiction in volumes one and two? "The problem of the refiguration of time by narrative will, therefore, be brought to its conclusion only when we shall be in a position to make the respective referential intentions of the historical narrative and the fictional narrative interweave. Our analysis of the fictive experience of time will at least have marked a decisive turning point in the direction of the solution to this problem that forms the horizon of my investigation, by providing something like a world of the text for us to think about, while awaiting its complement, the life-world of the reader, without which the signification of the literary world is incomplete." (160, vol. 2)
So volume 3, the scene of this interweaving (and beyond). It starts by reiterating some battles of the titans we have seen before (Augustine and Aristotle), but adds to the mix Husserl vs. Kant and Heidegger vs. I guess everyone including Heidegger. Let's set this aside (just as Ricouer does) to test out the interweaving of fiction and history. Through this we get a discussion of cosmological time (calenders, archives and generations) all of which deal with trace - "the trace is thus one of the more enigmatic instruments by which historical narrative 'refigures' time. It refigures time by contructing the junction brought about by the overlapping of the existential and the empirical in the significance of the trace." (126, vol. 3) Then we have fiction and phenomenological time - the way time is experienced, not always linear or progressive, but thick and weird. And then the question of truth and history (already hinted at). Also reading as the fusing of the time of the text and the time of the world (the reader). So bascially this interweaving comes about this way: "the interweaving of history and fiction in the refiguration of time rests, in the final analysis, upon this reciprocal overlapping, the quasi-historical moment of fiction changing places with the quasi-fictive moment of history. This interweaving, this reciprocal overlapping, this exchange of places, originates what is commonly called human time, where the standing-for the past in history is united with the imaginative variations of fiction, against the background of the aporias of the phenomenology of time." (192, vol 3)
Ok, so this interweaving brings us back to the original question: how does the poetics of narrative fill in for the aporias of time? We can now see how all the battles were each a reckoning with aporetic time (well, we could see this the entire time, but it all being scraped together here at the end). And that at the end there is an even more fundamental aporia to reckon with: "It has to do with the ultimate unrepresentability of time, which make even phenomenology continually turn to metaphors and to the language of myth, in order to talk about the upsurge of the present or the flowing of the unitary flux of time." (243, vol 3) This is how the aporetic inevitability (and the circularity of the argument) are productive. So the first aporia we see being tussled over is that of phenomenological time and cosomological time. We see that Augustine and Aristotle deal with it either by stretching time (pure mind) or stretching movement (pure movement). THis does really work. Husserl comes in with a phenomenology bounded by hyletics - this doesn't work either. (because it is hyletic it has to borrow from the material) Kant tries the reverse, doesn't work either. Then we have Heidegger, whose use of Care in Being does kinda work, but produces more aporias. The same goes for the aporia of the totality of time. Of these two aporias, Ricouer says, "we can say that narrativity does not offer the second aporia of temporality as adequate a response as it offered to the first aporia. This inadequacy will not be seen as a failure if we do not lose sight of the following two maxims. First, the reply of narrativity to the aporias of time consists less in resolving these aporias than in putting them to work, in making them productive. This is how thinking about history contributes to a refiguration of time. Second, any theory reaches its highest expression only when the exploration of the domain where its validity is verified is completed with a recognition of the limits that circumscribe this domain of validity." (261, vol 3) The final aporia is of course, as mentioned, the unrepresentability of time. But in closing, Ricouer reminds us that even as these came one after another, as did the solutions ("solutions") posed by the poetics of narrative, not to look at these as bounded chains or progressions that must be followed, but rather as productive constellations. "The mystery of time is not equivalent to a prohibition directed against language. Rather it gives rise to the exigence to think more and to speak differently. If such be the cause, we must pursue to its end the return of movement, and hold that the reaffirmation of the historical consciousness within the limits of its validity requires in turn the search, by individuals and by communities to which they belong, for their respective narrative identities. Here is the core of our whole investigation, for it is only withint this search that the aporetics of time and the poetics of narrative correspond to each other in a sufficient way." (274, vol 3)
Keywords
Narrative, Time, Aporia, History, Fiction, Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, Tradition, Configuration, Refiguration, Mimesis, Imagination, Mediation.
Other Thoughts
"This disastrous consequence [the forgetting of human time] can be avoided only if an analogy is preserved between the time of individuals and the time of civilizations: the analogy of growth and decline, of creation and death, the anology of fate. This analogy on the level of temporality is of the same nature as the analogy I tried to maintain on the level of procedures between causal attribution and emplotment, and then on the level of entities between societies (or civilizations) and the characters of drama. In this sense, all change enters the field of history as a quasi-event." (224, vol 1)
"Our analysis of the act of reading leads us to say rather that the practice of narrative lies in a thought experiment by means of which we try to inhabit worlds foreign to us. In this sense, narrative exercises the imagination more that the will, even though it remains a category of action." (249, vol. 3)
"In this sense, narrative already belongs to the ethical field in virtue of its claim - inseperable from its narration - to ethical justice. Still it belongs to the reader, now an agent, an initiator of action, to choose among the multiple proposals of ethical justice brought forth by reading. It is at this point that the notion of narrative identity encounters its limit and has to link up with the nonnarrative components in the formation of an acting subject." (249, vol. 3)
There is an excellent summary of these works, much much better than mine mainly because I was pretty lost during most of the Heidegger and Husserl sections, can be found here
Other QE Works Cited
Aristotle, Poetics, Selections (Narrative)
Bakhtin, M. The Dialogic Imagination (Narrative)
Barthes, R. Image-Music-Text (Narrative)
Barthes, R. Writing Degree Zero (Narrative)
Benjamin, W. Illuminations (Film and Media Studies)
Chatman, S. Story and Discourse (Narrative)
Genette, G. Narrative Discourse (Narrative)
Meleau-Ponty, M. Phenomenology of Perception (History and Theory of the Body)
Cohn, D. Transparent Minds (Narrative)
Rimmon-Kenan, S. Narrative Fiction (Narrative)
# posted by SMRT : 3:43 PM
