Paul Ricoeur and Narrative: Context and Contestation

Peter Babiak teaches English at the University of British Columbia.

French philosopher Paul Ricoeur has long been a neglected figure in the
humanities and social sciences. This collection of essays makes great
progress in applying his complex theories of narrative to a range of
fields. All the contributors assume Ricoeur’s central claim that
philosophy must move beyond the analysis of words and sentences toward
understanding extended levels of discourse such as narrative; just as a
metaphor is a poem in miniature because it “redescribes reality,” so
too is narrative a poetic device that makes sense of time by
redescribing human actions.

Some of these contributions are too limited in focus to be of interest
to nonacademic audiences. Jocelyn Blomfield’s survey of Ricoeur’s
work on Freud, for example, offers a handful of insights on
psychoanalysis, and James Fodor’s assessment of Ricoeur locates its
incompatibility with Christian notions of tragedy and redemption.

Drawing on Ricoeur’s concept of “narrative identity,” Morny Joy
examines the narratives of female incest survivors, for whom
storytelling is a form of therapy. The sparkling insight here is that
Joy avoids the relativist claim that if life must be interpreted in
order to make sense, then it must be a fiction; she argues instead that
autobiography is a way of realistically “repossessing” the intricate
plots that constitute our existence. Helen Buss makes a similar ethical
claim that women’s concerns should not be reduced to abstractions but
must reflect all aspects of life, as does Catherine Pinchin in her
feminist-inspired argument that narrative theory not remove itself from
the world outside texts.

More nonpartisan arguments are presented by Graham Livesey and
Dominique Perron. Moving Ricoeur’s contention that “life has to do
with narration” in an empirical direction, Livesey compares how
narratives creatively employ action and how architecture “shapes
spaces in which human actions unfold.” Perron, on the other hand, puts
a curious sociological inflection on Ricoeur’s ideas in order to
elaborate the overlapping cultural codes operating in what she calls
“Quebec’s contemporary narrative.”

Ricoeur’s narrative theory is attracting much discussion, although
its complexity makes coherent analysis an arduous task. This collection
helps simplify an otherwise difficult theory.