Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Dissertations (2009 -) Dissertations, Theses, and Professional Projects The oP etics of Remembrance: Communal Memory and Identity in Heidegger and Ricoeur David Leichter Marquette University Recommended Citation Leichter, David, "The oeP tics of Remembrance: Communal Memory and Identity in Heidegger and Ricoeur" (2011). Dissertations (2009 -). Paper 106. http://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/106 THE POETICS OF REMEMBRANCE: COMMUNAL MEMORY AND IDENTITY IN HEIDEGGER AND RICOEUR By David J. Leichter A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Milwaukee, Wisconsin May 2011 ABSTRACT THE POETICS OF REMEMBRANCE: COMMUNAL MEMORY AND IDENTITY IN HEIDEGGER AND RICOEUR David J. Leichter, B.A., M.A Marquette University, 2011 In this dissertation, I explore the significance of remembering, especially in its communal form, and its relationship to narrative identity by examining the practices that make possible the formation and transmission of a heritage. To explore this issue I use Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur, who have dedicated several of their major works to remembrance and forgetting. In comparing Heidegger and Ricoeur, I suggest that Ricoeur’s formulation of the identity of a subject and a community offers an alternative to Heidegger’s account. For, if Heidegger’s critique of subjectivity offers the possibility of a new relationship to history and community, it nevertheless overlooks the possibility of a humanism that is not tied to a metaphysical account of subjectivity. By contrast, the positive work of remembrance can recover heretofore concealed possibilities through our being faithful to the past, and saving it from the destructive forces of time. To show how the fragility of memory preserves the past against the destructive work of time and brings with it the hope of a better future, I emphasize one specific theme—namely, the debt we owe to the dead, which opens the possibility for ethical consideration of an historical community. In this regard, this dissertation pursues two goals. The first task is to elucidate how Heidegger’s and Ricoeur’s phenomenological projects understand the intimate connection between remembrance and the creation of a community. The second goal of this dissertation is to show how Ricoeur is able to respond to the problems that Heidegger’s ontological account of memory raises. The completion of these two tasks will contribute to a phenomenological hermeneutics of memory and forgetting. i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS David J. Leichter, B.A., M.A. This dissertation would not have been possible without the encouragement from a number of people. While it would be impossible to thank everyone who helped or influenced my thinking, I would like to explicitly thank the following people: my director Pol Vandevelde, for his interest in my project and for his confidence in my ability to put together this dissertation. Second, my friends: Melissa Mosko, Tia Simoni, Margaret Steele, Michael Thompson, and Nicholas Zettel. The debt I owe each of you is more profound than I could put into words, and, happily, greater than I could ever discharge. Your friendship, your humor, your gentle and forceful criticisms, and your unwavering support through the highs and the lows of this project have kept me motivated, challenged, and inspired. Finally, my family: Janice, Louis, Aaron, and Matthew, thank you for your support, your patience, and your love throughout. It is to you that I dedicate this work. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS The Poetics of Remembrance: Communal Memory and Identity in Heidegger and Ricoeur Acknowledgments i Introduction 1 Outline of Dissertation 6 Chapter I: What Calls for Remembering? 11 I.1. Introduction and Thesis 11 I.2. Challenges of the Past: Identity, Time, and Memory 14 I.2.1. Individual Memory, Communal Memory 15 I.2.2. The Distinction between the Past and the Present 24 I.2.3. The Hermeneutics of Historical Subjectivity 33 I.3. The Called Subject: Witnessing and Testimony 39 I.3.1. Two Meanings of Testimony 40 I.3.2. Heidegger: The Called Self 44 I.3.3. Ricoeur: Hermeneutics of the Summoned Subject 51 I.4. Conclusion 57 Chapter II: Authenticity, Historicity, and Community 60 II.1. Introduction and Thesis 60 II.2. Forgetting the Question of Being 63 II.2.1. Heidegger’s Aims and Method 64 II.2.2. From Understanding to Tradition 69 II.2.3. Idle Talk: The Transmission and Decline of Tradition 76 II.3. The Problem of Authenticity 87 II.3.1. The Existential-Individualist Interpretation 88 II.3.2. The Ontological Interpretation 92 II.3.3. The Narrative-Coherence Interpretation 94 II.4. Death, Conscience, and History in Being and Time 97 II.4.1. The Death of Dasein 99 II.4.2. Guilt, Conscience, and Resolutness 108 II.4.3. Repetition, Historicity, and Remembering 117 II.5. Conclusion: Being-From-Others? 123 Chapter III: Heidegger and the Origins of Remembering 131 III.1. Introduction and Thesis 131 III.2. Tragedy and Historicity 132 III.2.1. Tragedy and the Tragic 134 III.2.2. Historicity and the Tragic 137 III.3. Introduction to Metaphysics: The 1935 Interpretation of Antigone 151 III.4 Hölderlin’s Hymn: “The Ister”: The 1942 Interpretation of Antigone 175 III.5. Conclusion: Tragedy and Remembrance 198 iii Chapter IV: Remembering the Past: Selfhood and Community in Ricoeur 201 IV.1. Introduction and Thesis 201 IV.2. Heidegger and Ricoeur: On Human Historical Existence 202 IV.2.1. The “Short Route” and the “Long Route” 203 IV.2.2. Substantive Differences between Heidegger and Ricoeur 207 IV.3. The Phenomenology of Memory and Forgetting 213 IV.3.1. Memory as Mnēmē 215 IV.3.2. Memory as Anamnesis 220 IV.3.3. Memory and Forgetting 224 IV.4. Narrative Identity 227 IV.4.1. Idem-Identity and Ipse-Identity 228 IV.4.2. The Mimetic Arc of Narrative 231 IV.4.2.1. Mimesis1: Prefiguration 231 IV.4.2.2. Mimesis2: Configuration 235 IV.4.2.3. Mimesis3: Refiguration 241 IV.4.3. Narrative Identity and Selfhood 242 IV.5. Tragedy and Collective Memory 245 IV.5.1. The Ethical Aim and the Moral Norm 247 IV.5.2 Tragedy as the Self and Community in Conflict 252 IV.5.3 The Self and Community as a Response to Tragic Conflict 256 IV.6. Conclusion: The Crisis of Death 261 IV.6.1. Tragedy and Death 261 IV.6.2. Death and Burial 264 Chapter V: The Promises of Narrative Memory 269 V.1. Introduction and Thesis 269 V.2. Conflict and Reconciliation: The Uses and Abuses of Memory 270 V.2.1. Pathological-Therapeutic Memory 271 V.2.2. The Pragmatic Memory 275 V.2.3. The Ethico-Political Memory 279 V.2.4. The Critical Reconciliation of Memory 286 V.3. The Scriptural Entombment of the Past 289 V.3.1. History as Representing the Past 290 V.3.2. Traces of the Past and Repetition 297 V.3.3. Just History, Reconciled Memory 301 V.4. Forgiveness 305 V.4.1. The Logic of Equivalence and the Logic of Superabundance 307 V.4.2. The Economy of the Gift 310 V.4.3. The Possibility of Forgiveness 318 V.4.4. Unbinding the Agent from the Act 325 V.5. Conclusion 330 Conclusion 332 Bibliography 345 1 The Poetics of Remembrance: Communal Memory and Identity in Heidegger and Ricoeur Introduction In describing the challenges facing the construction of a memorial to the victims of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Marita Sturken suggests that perhaps the most complex challenge is how to do justice to the tension between those who are able to view the memorial in the present and those who died in the attack.1 She writes “[i]n the face of absence, especially an absence so violently and tragically wrought at the cost of so many lives, people feel a need to create a presence of some kind, and it may be for this 2 reason that questions of memorialization have so quickly followed this event.” While the construction of a memorial there has been delayed, this “rush to memorialize” reveals an important feature of remembering, namely the proper way to memorialize the past such that its does justice to the victims, lauds the endurance of those who continue to survive, and embraces the values that a group or community take to be fundamental.3 More than that, when we raise such questions regarding the possibility of doing justice to the dead 1 A similar question arises in the recent controversy regarding the construction of a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center. Some argue that building a mosque disrespects the memory of those killed there and will cause some victims undue pain, while others, notably Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have suggested 2 Marita Sturken, “Memorializing Absence.” Understanding September 11. Ed. Craig J. Calhoun et al. (New York: The New York Press, 2002): pp. 374–84, p. 375. 3 The phrase “rush to memorialize” is used in a number of recent essay that have appeared over the last decade to indicate just how quick we have been to erect monuments to traumatic events. Sturken, for example, wonders “Could we imagine people talking of memorialization after the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, or the bombing of Hiroshima? Or, for that matter, that the people of Rwanda talked of memorialization after the massacres that killed hundreds of thousands there? Throughout history, collective and public memorialization has most commonly taken place with the distance of time.” “Memorializing Absence,” p. 375. Janet Donohoe similarly uses the phrase in wondering whether or not such a rush can obscure questions about the meaning of such desire to remember.