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Narrative and Recognition in the Flesh: an Interview with Richard Kearney

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Narrative and Recognition in the Flesh: an Interview with Richard Kearney Article Philosophy and Social Criticism 1–16 ª The Author(s) 2017 Narrative and recognition Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav in the flesh: An interview DOI: 10.1177/0191453716688367 with Richard Kearney journals.sagepub.com/home/psc Gonc¸alo Marcelo Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal and Cato´lica Porto Business School, Porto, Portugal Abstract In this interview, conducted by Gonc¸alo Marcelo, Richard Kearney recaps his intellectual trajec- tory, commenting on his early works on imagination and his own narrative style of doing philo- sophy in order then to make explicit the deep connection between the more recent developments of Carnal Hermeneutics, Reimagining the Sacred and the work done with others in the context of the Guestbook Project. Drawing on some lesser-known aspects of his work, he emphasizes the carnal dimension of recognition and discusses the pitfalls of the Age of Excarnation. Finally, and as part of his ongoing role as a public intellectual, he also comments on Europe’s social and political situation and the dangers it faces (exacerbated secularization, the threat of terrorism, Brexit) arguing for a pedagogy of narrative exchange as a means to foster hospitality and inclusion. Keywords carnal hermeneutics, the Guestbook Project, Richard Kearney, narrative, recognition Richard Kearney’s recent work has coalesced around three main areas of intervention. The first two are exemplified by his latest books, Carnal Hermeneutics,1 edited with Brian Treanor, and Reimagining the Sacred,2 a collection of Kearney’s conversations on God with leading contemporary thinkers such as Charles Taylor, Julia Kristeva, Gianni Vattimo, Simon Critchley and Jean-Luc Marion, among others. The third area of inter- vention, taken up in his active role as a public intellectual, consists of his hermeneutic wager of exchanging stories as a means to intervene in conflicted and divided commu- nities, fostering a transition from hostility to hospitality through an imaginative and narrative procedure. Corresponding author: Gonc¸alo Marcelo, Universidade de Coimbra Centro de Estudos Cla´ssicos e Humanı´sticos, Largo da Porta Ferrea, Faculdade de Letras, Coimbra 3004-530, Portugal; and Universidade Cato´lica Portuguesa Cato´lica Porto Business School, Rua Diogo Botelho 1327, Porto 4169-005, Portugal. Email: [email protected] 2 Philosophy and Social Criticism While one could argue that some of these developments are fairly recent (for instance, the heavy insistence on the ‘carnal’ aspect of hermeneutics) it cannot be denied how, in a way, they all stem from earlier developments. Thus Reimagining the Sacred not only builds on his early work on imagination (The Wake of Imagination3); it also serves as a dialogical exchange with many of the prominent voices that, one way or another, are interested in his intriguing anatheistic proposal, presented in Anatheism: Returning to God after God,4 a volume that itself further extends some of the intuitions already present in his ‘Philosophy at the Limit’ trilogy – The God Who May Be;5 On Stories;6 Strangers, Gods and Monsters.7 However, what is sometimes not sufficiently grasped is the way in which all these different topics and areas of intervention are themselves part of a single (albeit complex and far-reaching) project. In the opening essay of the book Carnal Herme- neutics, titled the ‘Wager of Carnal Hermeneutics’, Kearney states that ‘Life is hermeneutic through and through. It goes all the way up and all the way down. From head to foot and back again.’8 And while the wager of this book is to contend that hermeneutics begins in the flesh and that evaluation is an integral part of our carnal orientation, for Kearney the far-reaching power of hermeneutics goes even further. Going ‘all the way down’ means that sensation and interpretation are thus deeply interwoven, to a level that we did not suspect before, and that is perhaps deeper than any properly conscious activity or linguistic structuration. But the inverse movement of going ‘all the way up’ also means creatively recovering the possibility of ‘the God that may be’, a possibility, so to speak, reborn from the ashes of the metaphysical God and that somehow tries to go beyond the atheist secularist version of what Charles Taylor calls the ‘immanent frame’.9 Ultimately, not only going all the way up and down in an hyperbolical vertical movement but also engaging in a comple- mentary, horizontal movement of reciprocal exchange aiming towards the other – the hermeneutic process of narrative healing, such as can be found at work in the exam- ples of stories retold and invented in the context of the Guestbook Project – is also a form of social change. As such, it becomes apparent that these three domains of Richard Kearney’s work are not only deeply intertwined but can hardly be understood separately. Reading the flesh, interpreting the divine and re-engaging with history so as to re-envision a common future are so many wagers whose outcomes are never fully guaranteed but that become critical tasks that call for perpetual creative renewal. In this interview, Kearney reveals some fundamental aspects of these multifaceted areas of intervention, drawingourattentiontosomelesser-known aspects of what is at stake in this theore- tical and practical endeavor, such as: the carnal aspect of recognition, the political and social stakes of a new ethos for Europe, drawing on the idea of the acknowledgment of wounds but also on the healing power of inclusive exchange of narratives, the risks and challenges of the Age of Excarnation, and the inclusive alternatives to the overempha- sized secularization of the public sphere. Gonc¸alo Marcelo (Columbia University in New York City, November 2016) Marcelo 3 I On stories and imagination: Recapping an intellectual trajectory [Gonc¸alo Marcelo] Carnal Hermeneutics, the book you recently edited with Brian Treanor, presents us with a very ambitious project, which, if successfully undertaken, could lead to a radically different understanding of the relations between meaning, interpretation and the materiality of our bodies. What I would want you to do now is to look back at your already long and prolific career and tell me if you feel that there is a certain continuity or disconti- nuity between the topics you chose to emphasize. In your first books like Poe´tique du possible10 you explored the notions of possibility, and later conducted investigations in modern and postmodern imagination. And yet it was only recently that you came to very heavily insist on the carnal aspect of all of this, drawing from the phenomenologies of the body in Sartre, Ricoeur and Merleau-Ponty, but also aiming at going beyond them. Would you say that there has been a shift in your focus, or not at all? [Richard Kearney] I would say that the carnal emphasis was actually there from the beginning though it may not have been entirely explicit in, say, Poe´tique du possible and the works on imagination. But it was implicit because imagination as I understand it – but also as Aristotle and even Kant understood it (therefore both the classical and the modern interpretation of imagination) – is an indispensable bridge between the sensible (the body) and the intelligible (the mind). Thus, in effect, imagination is the refusal of the dualism of body and mind. And Aristotle acknowledged this already in the Poetics11 when he said that catharsis is practical intelligence – what Ricoeur calls phronetic understanding. There is a dianoia (a thought) involved in the poetic imaginative process, the narrative process, and there is affect: i.e. catharsis by purging pity and fear. Narrative – mythos-mimesis (emplotted imitation of suffering in action) is already a way of com- bining affect, pathos (pity and fear), and phobos in a form of acknowledgment. So narrative acknowledgment combines knowledge (which the chorus of a tragedy teaches) with a deep affective response of pity and fear. Now, Aristotle thematizes this when he distinguishes two kinds of imagination: phantasia logistike (intellectual) and phantasia aesthetica (affective). The animal has affective imagination. But only humans have both. Now, coming to Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason: when he affirms that imagination is ‘a hidden art in the depths of the human soul’,12 he is stating that while we in the West have, since Plato, divided the world into the intelligible and the sensible, imagination is actually that productive schematizing force that precedes the division. It synthesizes by means of an unconscious activity ‘of which we are seldom even conscious’ [Unbewusst- sein].13 It is the ‘common root’ of the intelligible and the sensible and operates at both levels before we ever make the distinction between the analytic and the aesthetic. So I would say that my earlier fascination with imagination was already an ambidextrous procedure of working through intellectual ideas while always recognizing its emotive, affective power. There is also a personal aspect to this. As I was writing philosophy I was also writing novels, and novels are usually meant to strike you, move you, affect you. Fictional narratives don’t just give you a theory, they touch you. That is why you keep reading them. So I see fictional understanding as a necessary complement to what we might call logical understanding. I would say acknowledgment is the realm of narrative imagination. It is a combination of knowledge and affect. 4 Philosophy and Social Criticism When reading your books and the topics you deal with we sometimes get the feeling that your intellectual investigations are also some sort of personal journey, and that translates into both the form and the content of what you write. Do you feel that there is this journey of narrative imagination, stemming from your own vital preoccupations, and that in some way it informs your practice of philosophy? My students tell me that when I teach I tell stories.
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