That is does he present references that exceed his presentation intentionally such that as we trace his path we can and ought see different things.

In the “Reading Guidelines” for chapter 3 Ricoeur writes that “the younger tradition of objectivity” and “the ancient tradition of reflexivity” (I’m not quite sure what he means by “reflexivity” here—any help anyone?) “do not oppose one another on the same plane, but occupy universes of discourse that have become estranged from each other. Having said this, the task of a philosophy concerned with understanding how historiography articulates its discourse in terms of that of the phenomenology of memory is, first, to discern the reasons for this radical misunderstanding through an examination of the internal functioning of the discourses proffered on either side; the task is, then, to throw some lines between the two discourses, in the hope of providing some credibility to the hypothesis of a distinct, yet reciprocal and interconnected, constitution of individual memory and of collective memory” (p. 95).

I had a bit of an epiphany reading this in that I think this is precisely why I’m so drawn to Ricoeur, b/c this kind of estrangement between discourses is precisely what I feel as a social scientist when I try to read work in other disciplines—esp. in the gap between social science and cultural studies, at least in American scholarship. So, Ricoeur’s work which tries to “throw some lines” between discourses is particularly refreshing for me. I also think this aspect of his work is closely related to his method—which Clark has expressed frustration about—of “sketching out a loosely knit typology” (p. 57) of various issues and problems related to memory. I agree that this approach Ricoeur has chosen takes patience to read (500+ pages of patience!), but because I’m deeply interested in these lines between discourses, as well as seeing how the shift in Ricoeur’s work toward questions of society and justice comes about, I’m feeling much more optimistic about the expected payoffs from reading this tome, at least for me personally (also, I was a bit relieved that ch. 2 was noticeably easier to read than ch. 1 for me…).

To read Ricoeur (whether here or elsewhere) strictly within the bounds of semiotics is at least to do some violence to his stated purposes, is it not? I can concede the discourse’s “play of its own” that “isn’t fully under [the author's] control,” but only if the emphasis remains on the word “fully”: it is, after all, at least in part under Ricoeur’s control, and I trust him to deliver. I’m far less interested—personally, I should add—in what other directions this or that reference in his study may lead (on a first read at least!).

Another way to put this same point is this: I’m reading Ricoeur because I’m interested in Ricoeur’s position on these issues, not because I’m interested in coming to answers right now about these issues on the whole. But of course I can totally understand why someone would read this book for other purposes as well. Just a point of clarification, I suppose.

I’ll read the next two chapters tomorrow (I’ve been swamped) but I just can’t see him making the move you suggest. Although history and intersubjectivity and communial memory obviously will be part of the move he makes.

The problem ultimately is one of reference vs. description. He calls to mind movements largely via reference rather than description. This leads to problems if one isn’t reading them as he does. (To be charitable one first has to understand what one is being charitable in terms of – the very point of contention between Gadamer and Derrida and perhaps ultimately between Derrida and Ricoeur) Put an other way while what you suggest may be true it seems the semiotic abundance that his references provide may well undermine the moves he makes with them. His discourse follows a play of its own and isn’t fully under his control.

I will confess that this book seems, among Ricoeur’s works, to expect a good deal more familiarity on the reader’s part with the authors Ricoeur has studied. I’m not sure whether that means that he was writing only to people he thought would have read all the same authors he had, or whether that means that he intended only to write a kind of guide to the relevant literature. I suspect, however, that neither of these descriptions would have much impressed him, and that he saw himself doing something rather different. It does seem quite clear (from the dozen or so explicit hints Ricoeur has already left us) that this first part of the book (on memory) is for Ricoeur “only” a kind of necessary point (or two…) of clarification that must be made on the way to dealing with what he really intends to discuss: history. I suppose I’ve been a bit more inclined to treat Ricoeur with (excessive?) charity because I trust he has good reason to treat all this “philosophy of mind” stuff (there’s my own dismissive gesture to add into the mix!) rather briefly.

But, as you say, we’ll see.

Put an other way he probably would have been better off either explaining his point and then listing a few examples. Instead he gives examples without really explaining the point they illustrate and then it’s not clear (when one attempts to read between the lines) that they illustrate well the point he’s making.

I admit that thus far I’m a fair bit dissatisfied with the book. Maybe I’m the only one but I find it vastly inferior to his trilogy on narrative or his Oneself as Another.

Maybe that dissatisfaction is coming through too much and starting to bias how I’m reading the book. We’ll see.

Clark, I worry that wherever your own interests don’t meet up with Ricoeur’s, you are concerned that he is misunderstanding something. I don’t think that he means to suggest, whenever he deals with something relatively quickly, that that subject or discipline or field is therefore without problems! Rather, he sees it as unnecessary, for his present purposes, to go into that subject or discipline or field in any greater detail than he does. Every word Ricoeur employs is connected with various problematics, and Ricoeur could thus have written a five-hundred page book out of his first three pages of this one, but I don’t think he would have accomplished his own purposes. When he says something that must be argued against (where we negate his position), then it seems to complaints are in order, but it seems less than charitable to point out what he doesn’t address, unless the lack would somehow change his conclusions. Or am I misunderstanding you?