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Paul Ricoeur on Memory

Article in Theory Culture & Society · December 2005

DOI: 10.1177/0263276405059418

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Paul Ricoeur On Memory

Abdelmajid Hannoum

La Mémoire, l’Histoire, l’Oubli

by Paul Ricoeur
Paris: Seuil, 2000
I

T
O REVIEW a book by Paul Ricoeur is not just a daunting task, a
highly risky adventure, but it is rather an impossible endeavor.1 For,
how can one review an author whose work is made out of reviews of
others, the style, rigor and criticism of which make the original, it’s often
said, read better in his review? Therefore instead of a review, I will discuss
some central themes of the relatively recent book (or rather three books in
one) by Ricoeur entitled: La Mémoire, l’Histoire, l’Oubli.2 The book has
three major and distinct parts, and each tackles a specific problematic. The
first is entitled ‘Of Memory and Reminiscence’, the second ‘History/Epis-
temology’ and the third ‘The Historical Condition’. Each will be discussed
in a separate section.
In the introduction, Ricoeur states that the goal of his enterprise is not
just a professional one – to engage on these issues with historians – it is
also one of his ‘civic themes’. He writes:

I remain concerned by the troublesome spectacle that too much memory gives
here and too much forgetfulness gives there, to say nothing of the influence
of the commemoration and the abuses of memory – and of forgetfulness. The
idea of a politics of a just memory remains, in this regard, one of my declared
civic themes. (p. 1)

Memory has been the object of an abundant literature in the last

three decades. Historians, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers and
literary critics seem to have discovered a new perspective and have
examined cultures, societies and histories within the framework of this

■ Theory, Culture & Society 2005 (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi),
Vol. 22(6): 123–137
DOI: 10.1177/0263276405059418

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124 Theory, Culture & Society 22(6)

thing called memory. Is this, then, just another book on memory? In this
monumental work, Ricoeur examines an astonishing amount of literature
about memory, and along with it history, forgetfulness and forgiveness (for
they are all interconnected in a way that his book has the merit of showing).
But Ricoeur’s book is more than just a book about memory, it is a lesson
on memory itself, better yet, it is a memory of memory. For those who may
think that memory is a new object or even a new fashion of our time, the
first part of Ricoeur’s book shows that the issue of memory – thus of
the representation of the past which is, in the final analysis, the issue of
the presence of something absent – is a topic that was carefully examined
by Greek philosophers. The issue of memory seems to be an important
theme in the Socratic dialogues. It is also a theme to which Aristotle
devoted an entire study. For Plato, the question of the eikon is treated as
the representation of something absent, thus the issue of memory should
be dealt with in relation to the larger issue of imagination. The problem,
as discussed in Theaetetus and the Sophist, is that the eikon is associated
with the tupos, or imprint. Plato examines the issue of representing some-
thing previously perceived or learned, and thus defends the inclusion of
the issue of image and that of remembrance. Aristotle, on the other hand,
maintains that memory, in the sense of the persistence of remembrance in
the mind, is an affection (pathos), distinct from recollection. ‘Memory is of
the past’, according to Aristotle, it is what has once happened. There is
memory only ‘when time has elapsed’. This is based on sensation (percep-
tion [aisthesis]) of time. If animals have a simple memory, only humans have
the kind of sensation that allows them to distinguish between the ‘before’
and the ‘after’. One can see that, with Aristotle, memory is examined
conjointly with time. It is also examined conjointly with imagination, for it
is sensation that produces affection (tupos) and thus there is the presence
of affection and the absence of the thing that produced the affection. It is
like a painting (zographema) referred to as memory.
It is interesting that Aristotle, according to Ricoeur, notes the import-
ant fact that we do not remember the thing that is absent, but rather the
affection. Hence the question: ‘How is it that, when perceiving an image,
one remembers something distinct from it?’ Aristotle introduces the concept
of inscription, which contains a reference to something other than affection
(the painting of an animal, according to the example of Aristotle, can be
seen both as a simple painting and as an eikon, ‘a copy’).
Ricoeur takes the division between mneme and anamnesis to be a
major one in the work of Aristotle on memory. From his engaging discussion
of the Greek heritage, namely Plato and Aristotle, Ricoeur concludes with
an outline of a phenomenology of memory. For him, the question of memory
should first be treated as a ‘happy fulfillment’ of certain capacities, not as
deficiencies or dysfunctions, as it has been, by and large, by neuroscien-
tists. Memory, for Ricoeur, contains an ambition, a claim, which is one of
faithfulness to the past. In this regard, the deficiencies of memory are forget-
fulness, which is part of memory. Ricoeur writes: ‘If we can blame memory

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Hannoum – Paul Ricoeur on Memory 125

for lacking reliability, it is precisely because it is our only and unique

resource to signify the past-character of what we claim to remember’ (p. 26).
This is not, of course, the case for imagination, which is taken to refer to
what is unreal and fictitious. The claim of memory to truth is thus a crucial
trait to keep in mind. Ricoeur adds energetically: ‘To put it bluntly, we have
nothing better than memory to signify that something has taken place, has
happened, has happened before we claim to remember it’ (p. 26).
For Ricoeur, imagination and memory are alike in one important
aspect: they both contain the presence of something absent. But if ‘memory
is time’, according to Aristotle, then even ‘being is expressed in many ways’
(l’être se dit de multiple manières). Nevertheless, memory refers to the past
and it is in this same reference, or rather, it is its very claim to the truth of
the past that constitutes the epistemic dimension of the issue of memory.
For, after all, if memory is not a thing, it is not an object, it is an act and
an action, its epistemic dimension is blended with its pragmatic dimension,
which makes it an exercise. For memory exerts itself.
Indeed, memory, Ricoeur contends, has an objectal trait, one does not
just remember, but one rather remembers something. There is hence
memory as an aim (visée) (act and action) and remembrance as the thing
aimed at (le souvenir comme chose visée). This same distinction is inspired
for Ricoeur by Husserl’s distinction between noese, recollection and the
noeme, which is remembrance (le souvenir). Further, memory is singular (as
a competence and as an effectuation, Ricoeur says); remembrances
(souvenirs) are plural, one has remembrances. That is why Ricoeur refers
to a regime of remembrances. But here what Ricoeur thinks is the most
important characteristic of memory: ‘it has to do with the privilege given
spontaneously to events among all the “things” we remember’ (p. 29). This
is very important, for while the ‘event’ (Ricoeur defines it as what has
happened)3 has been banished from the domain of historiography in the
Annales School, Ricoeur draws the attention to its subtle, almost invisible,
return in the work of historians of the same school. The point for Ricoeur
is that memory is not only about events, but being so, it also constitutes a
form of knowledge.
Ricoeur distinguishes between three types of memory: repressed
memory, manipulated memory and forced memory. The first one is on the
pathologic-therapeutic level; the second one is on the practical level; and
the third on the ethico-political level. Ricoeur attempts here to link what
Freud says about mourning and melancholy, that is individual memory, to
collective memory. But Freud himself suggested the link, or rather the
extrapolation. Freud indeed wrote: ‘Mourning is regularly the reaction to the
loss of a loved person, or to the loss of some abstraction which has taken
the place of one, such as one’s country, liberty, an ideal, and so on’ (Freud,
1981, vol. 14: 243). This is inscribed in the collective existence. ‘There is
no historical community’, Ricoeur says, ‘which is not born from a situation
that we can assimilate without hesitation to violence’ (p. 96). Some people
win and others lose, some people are glorified and others are humiliated.

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126 Theory, Culture & Society 22(6)

‘Thus’, Ricoeur writes, ‘there are stores in the archives of collective memory
of symbolic wounds that need to be healed’ (p. 96).
Ricoeur reserves a distinct place for the manipulated memory, instru-
mentalized memory, so to speak, in which both memory and forgetfulness
are subject to an intense manipulation by power. It is here that one can see
at their fullest extent the modalities of the abuse of memory. Here, one
cannot separate memory and identity, whether this is individual or collec-
tive, better yet, one cannot think of identity without memory. For identity is
based on memory, hence the fragility of identity. This fragility has to do with
the fact that identity has a strong relation to time and the question, accord-
ing to Ricoeur, is this: ‘What does it really mean to remain oneself through-
out time?’ The second cause of the fragility of identity is the encounter, or
rather the confrontation, with the other, a confrontation that threatens one’s
identity. The third cause of the fragility of identity is precisely the ‘heritage
of the founding violence’. For again, writes Ricoeur:

. . . it is a fact that there is no historical community that has not been born
from a relationship that we can name an original relation to war. What we
celebrate under the names of founding events are essentially acts of violence,
legitimized after the fact by a State of precarious rights, legitimized, at the
limit, by their ancient, outdated character. (p. 99)

The manipulation of memory is due to another factor – ideology.

Ricoeur understands the concept of ideology in the sense given by Clifford
Geertz. About ideology Geertz writes:

With no notion of how metaphor, analogy, irony, ambiguity, pun, paradox,

hyperbole, rhythm, and all the other elements of what we lamely call ‘style’
operate – even, in a majority of cases, with no recognition that these devices
are of any importance in casting personal attitudes into public form, sociol-
ogists lack the symbolic resources out of which to construct a more incisive
formulation. At the same time that the arts have been establishing the cogni-
tive power of ‘distortion’: and philosophy has been undermining the adequacy
of an emotivist theory of meaning, social scientists have been rejecting the
first and embracing the second. It is not therefore surprising that they evade
the problem of constructing the import of ideological assertions by simply
failing to recognize it as a problem. (Geertz, 1973: 209)

For ideology tends to legitimize orders of power. Domination, in the

Weberian conception, refers to a relation between ruler and ruled. Between
the first and the last, there is a lack or gap, which is filled by ideology. In
other words, that lack is filled by a system of symbols (i.e. ideology).
It is here, then, that one can see the manipulation of memory. ‘On the
deepest level’, writes Ricoeur, ‘the level of symbolic mediations of action,
it is through the narrative function that memory is incorporated in the
making of identity’ (p. 103). How so? Narratives are made of recollection
and of forgetfulness. They consist of a configuration of protagonists with

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Hannoum – Paul Ricoeur on Memory 127

identities that define action. Hence, when memory (via narrative, but also
via commemoration) is forced, it comes armed with an ‘authorized’ history
which is the official history taught and learnt in institutions.
But as narratives they are constructed, and as such this construction
is motivated and oriented, not only by truth, but by good. This is to say that
morality regulates narratives of memory. This is the third level that Ricoeur
investigates. It is the ethico-political level, where memory is not only
manipulated, but is rather forced. This, however, cannot be done without an
examination of the historical conditions that made both use and abuse
possible. For Ricoeur, the issue of representation of the past begins with
memory, not with history.
Ricoeur talks about the ‘injunction to remember’. The difficulties of a
national community or its political body require that memory be
commanded, ordered. This may seem curious because memory is supposed
to be spontaneous. However, even in situations of therapy, memory is
ordered by a conjoint effort of both the analyst and the analyzed. Coming
from outside and being subjective, the duty of memory is much more present
in the idea of justice. Ricoeur writes: ‘It is justice which extracts from
traumatizing remembrances their exemplary value, turns memory into a
project, and it is this project of justice that gives the form of the future and
of imperativeness to the duty of memory’ (p. 107). The duty of memory, in
Ricoeur’s view, is in the final analysis the duty of justice. But what about
the abuses of memory? For Ricoeur those are abuses in the ways the idea
of justice is handled.
II
Ricoeur reiterates that memory is the matrix of history. But what is history?
‘History is, from beginning to end, écriture’ (p. 173). To investigate the
relation between history and memory, Ricoeur distinguishes three phases in
the historiographic operation. The first is what he calls ‘the documentary
phase’. It is the phase of the eye-witnessing, indispensable for establishing
the archives whose aim is to ground the evidence. This is to say that his-
toriography is archived memory. The second phase is explicatory/compre-
hensive, where one seeks answers for specific questions of research. The
third phase is called representative, that is the phase where one gives form
in writing, where the historian declares the intention of representing the past
as it happened.
History itself begins with witnessing, therefore with memory. ‘With
witnessing’, Ricoeur writes, ‘an epistemological process opens. It departs
from declared memory, passes through the archives and the documents, and
ends with the documentary proof’ (p. 210). In other words, before the archiv-
ing, there is the witnessing, which is complex and has different usages, but
which has the fundamental characteristic of being a narrative. As such, it
is separated from the narrator. However, Ricoeur contends that between the
saying and what is said there is a gap that allows the ‘what is said of the
things said’ to have a life, a career of its own. In the archives, the historian

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128 Theory, Culture & Society 22(6)

finds witnessing converted into writing. The historian in the archives is thus
a reader. To say archive is to refer not only to masses of witnessing, but also
to a place, a physical and a social space. The place is where both the
inclusion and exclusion of discourses happen that provide the framework
for the historiographic operation. This is the domain not of history or his-
toriography, but rather of a distinct discipline called archiving. Nonethe-
less, whereas the document of the archive (the document again being the
witnessing fixed in writing and placed somewhere) does not have a specific
receiver, the witnessing, on the other hand, does have a receiver and is
addressed to someone in particular. In addition, the document of the
archives is both ‘silent’ and ‘orphaned’; it is detached from its authors. Thus,
the archives are believed, in the historical culture of the age, to be the
provider of objectivity. The archive, Ricoeur contends, is nothing more and
nothing less than archived memory. The archives are based on witnessing,
therefore on memory. However, unlike memory that establishes a fiduciary
contract between the sender and the receiver, the archives are made of
multiplicity of sources, voices. One could borrow the expression of Bakhtin
and say they are polyphonic. The task of the historian is precisely to judge
and decide on what is ‘false’ and what is ‘true’. But the historian, who is
therefore a judge by definition, does not come to the archives innocently,
but with an agenda, with a set of questions, that necessarily affects the
constitution of the ‘evidence’ upon which historical knowledge is based.
Again, this is to say that the matrix of historical knowledge is memory, but
this is also to say that memory, either repressed, manipulated or forced,
becomes institutionalized, goes through channels of power and the intrica-
cies of the making of historical knowledge. For, after all, history is a narra-
tive, and as such is subject to techniques of writing that Ricoeur calls
explanation, comprehension and representation. Here one finds an echo of
the ideas discussed by Arthur Danto (1985), Louis Mink (1987) and Hayden
White (1978). This is also a continuation of the same discussion one finds
in Temps et récit (Ricoeur, 1981).
The explanation/comprehension stage of the historiographic operation
allows history to become autonomous and fully independent from memory.
This level, explanation/comprehension, is not detached from the level of
documentation that contains explanation in the form of a questioning. Yet,
the level explanation/comprehension brings another mode of explanation
similar to the one in science, for it is based on modeling, which is the
product of a scientific imaginary. ‘This imaginary’, Ricoeur contends, ‘leads
the mind far from the private and public recollection to the realm of what
is possible’ (p. 231). Without this scientific imaginary, the mind would be
led instead to the realm of fiction. The scientific imaginary allows a segmen-
tation of the objects of reference. For Ricoeur, this decoupage is regulated
by two principles. The first is that the models of explanation in the practice
of history have in common the fact that they all refer to a human reality as
a social fact. Hence, history’s status as a social science. The second prin-
ciple consists in the decoupage within social science. For history focuses

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Hannoum – Paul Ricoeur on Memory 129

on the transformation and difference, meaning that history is marked by the

temporal and this is what distinguishes it from other disciplines in social
science. Because this is so, history – that is, historical discourse – offers
similarities with the phenomenology of memory, despite a great difference.
Time, or rather the durations (durées) for the historian are constructed –
long, short, quasi timeless, as articulated by Fernand Braudel. Whether it
is the macro history or micro history, time is structured in a certain way, the
long durée according to the first, and structured and quantified durée accord-
ing to the second. For the phenomenologist, time is the time of lived experi-
ence. It may order objects, but it does not do so according to the concept
of multiple durées. Yet, it is these attempts to restructure durées that make
history closer to the phenomenology of action (what Ricoeur likes to term
the phenomenology of the acting and suffering man). For history, or more
specifically the history of representation usually referred to as the history
of mentality, tends to explore lived experience and operates with the concept
of power (the power to do, the power to speak, the power to narrate, the
power to impute one’s own origin of actions). Or to quote Ricoeur, himself
quoting Bernard Lepetit, ‘history refers to the common action in the social
world’ (p. 462).
Memory too, collective memory, that is, continues to be part of what
Ricoeur calls the capable man (or the competent man). Yet, despite the
rapprochement, epistemologically the history of mentality/representation
continues to be on the opposite side of the phenomenology of action. Ricoeur
stresses this rapprochement precisely by preferring the term ‘history of
representation’ to the term, vague in his opinion, of the ‘history of mental-
ity’. For, when one says representation one evokes the problem of memory
in relation to the Greek eikon and the problem of the presence of what is
absent, something that has once existed, but no longer does. The history of
representation also evokes the problem of historical writing, for the histori-
cal narrative is literally written; yet it is distinct from fiction. In his
discussion of the historiographic operation, Ricoeur prefers to talk about
representation, rather than mentality or interpretation, because the concept
of representation is much more refined and it allows him to make the import-
ant distinction between representation-object of the historical discourse and
as a phase of the historiographic operation, and the representation-
operation. The historical discourse mimes the interpretative gesture of the
actors of history. Therefore, there is a mimetic rapport between the repre-
sentation-operation (as a moment of doing history) and the representation-
object (as a moment of historical doing). To make a rapprochement between
the two types of representation is to maintain that the issue of the represen-
tation of the past begins with memory, not with history. For, it is in fact
memory (the ability to make present something absent that has happened
in the past) that first claims faithfulness to the past. But is memory part of
history? Or is it the other way, is it history that is in charge of memory?
Memory is a ‘new’ object of history, along with the other new objects such
as the body, food, death, sexuality, and so forth. Therefore, quoting and

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130 Theory, Culture & Society 22(6)

endorsing Le Goff, Ricoeur concludes that the history of memory is part of

the ‘history of history’. But for Ricoeur ‘what is unique in a history of memory
is the history of its modes of transmission’ (p. 504). Memory is always a
memory of events, as shown by Pomian (1988), and as such memory is
grounded in the representations of the epoch that one refers to. The memory
of Christian Europe, for instance, remains ‘grounded in the entirety of repre-
sentations of the after-life’ (p. 73). But there is another view, maintained by
Robert Terdiman (1993), which makes memory what it is because of the
movement of history. It is not that memory is part of history, rather it is the
other way around, and it is history that reveals memory. But can one talk
about memory without talking about forgetfulness? Is not the latter part of
the former, the same way one would say silence is part of history?
Like memory, forgetfulness has to do with faithfulness to the past.
Forgetfulness is seen as a betrayal of memory, for after all memory is an
effort against forgetfulness, and forgetfulness is the challenge to memory.
For this reason, Ricoeur writes almost solemnly: ‘Forgetfulness remains in
fact the disturbing threat outlined behind the phenomenology of memory
and the epistemology of history’ (p. 536). Yet, the idea of an absolute memory
sounds terrifying, he adds. Forgetfulness, and hence also forgiveness, are a
necessity for memory, not always an enemy. Both forgetfulness and forgive-
ness share the same horizon. On the issue of forgetfulness, Ricoeur applies
the same principle as to the issue of memory. On one hand, he approaches
forgetfulness from a cognitive point of view in relation to the faithfulness of
representing the past, for again forgetfulness is seen as a dysfunction of
memory; on the other hand, from a pragmatic point of view, he examines
forgetfulness in its practice, and thus the problem of use and abuse
discussed in relation to memory.
For Ricoeur, the problem of forgetfulness is a problem of trace. He
thus distinguishes three types of traces, the written trace, or the trace
document, in the context of historiography; the psychic trace, an intimate
one, that is the impression caused by an important event; and the cortical
trace, an exterior one, which is the domain of neuroscience. The issue of
forgetfulness is played out on the juxtaposition of the second and the third
types of traces. The second is related to the effacement of traces, a type of
deep forgetfulness, the third is more hidden; one talks about them only retro-
spectively and in relation to specific experiences. Hence, these traces are
not erased, but rather made inaccessible. Hence, one forgets less than one
thinks, as he put it. Or, to put it slightly differently from him, one remem-
bers more than one thinks.
III
Ricoeur undermines the role neuroscience can play in our understanding
of memory. He takes the concept of ‘recognition’ as central in the act of
memory. It is when one recognizes that the current image is believed to be
faithful to the first affection-impression. What is there, according to Ricoeur,
is not a reactivation of traces, as neuroscience would maintain, but rather

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the persistence of the originary impression. Following, or rather elaborating

on Bergson, Ricoeur explores this issue, namely that images and remem-
brances (souvenirs) exist (Bergson, 1913). They are preserved ‘uncon-
sciously’ inasmuch as he talks about forgetfulness of reserve (l’oubli de
reserve) (p. 541). Forgetfulness, at least forgetfulness that is manifest, is not
a dysfunction, but rather part of memory, it too is not an object but an act.
Forgetfulness too exerts itself. This is why Ricoeur talks about the use and
abuse of forgetfulness, the way he talks about the use and abuse of memory.
The point, however, is that it is the traces, written, affective or cortical, that
allow one to speak of memory or of forgetfulness. But how would one recog-
nize that such and such trace is a mnestic trace? Ricoeur maintains it is
because of the relation to time and to the past. Hence, the task of the
philosopher, according to him, is to connect the sciences of traces with the
issue of the representation to the past. But there is a major difficulty for
such an enterprise that consists in the fact that ‘all traces are in the present.
None of them signifies absence or the anteriority’ (p. 552). Thus:

. . . to think the trace, one should think it both as an effect of the present and
a sign of its absent cause. However, in the material trace, there is no other-
ness, no absence. Everything in it is a positivity and a presence. (p. 552)

However, for Ricoeur, the trace, written or cortical, is only an exterior

mark. There is a trace that consists of impressions left in us by events. This
impression remains and makes recognition possible. For, ‘recognition is the
mnemonic act par excellence’, according to Ricoeur. ‘If a remembrance
comes back, it is because I lost it. However, if despite everything I found
it again and recognize it, it is because its images have survived’ (p. 557).
Thus, Ricoeur places his book within the framework of Bergson by framing
the issue of memory in terms of recognition and survival, a way of paying
homage to Bergson, who remains, for Ricoeur, the philosopher who ‘under-
stood the close link between what he calls “surviving images” and the
phenomena of recognition’ (p. 558).
Ricoeur thus investigates the issue of forgetfulness according to
degrees of manifestation, on the bottom a deep memory, he notes, and on
the top, a habit memory. But he also investigates it according to modes of
activity, for recalling happens according to different degrees. Also, as in the
case of memory, Ricoeur investigates forgetfulness in the epistemological as
well as the pragmatic dimensions. If one speaks about memory prevented,
one can also speak about forgetfulness prevented. To say something is
forgotten is to say that it is not available and that there is an inability to
access the treasures of memory. Ricoeur goes back to the texts of Freud
about memory to note that repetition equals forgetfulness. The patient of
Freud repeats, but does not remember. Ricoeur finds the lesson Freud’s
psychoanalysis insightful for the question of memory. For trauma remains,
despite the fact that it might be not be available, and it gives birth to various
substitute phenomena, symptoms that prevent what is from coming back.

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132 Theory, Culture & Society 22(6)

The second lesson is that events, experiences, in short parts of the past that
are believed to be lost once and for all, can come back. Thus Ricoeur
adheres to the Freudian thesis of unforgetfulness.
There are also forms of forgetfulness that are manifest, placed between
the pole of activity and the pole of passivity. For this reason the fragility of
memory is the fragility of identity. For the abuse of memory is also an abuse
of forgetfulness. Yes, one cannot forget everything, but one cannot narrate
everything either. ‘The idea of an exhaustive narrative is a peformatively
impossible idea’, Ricoeur writes (p. 597). The ideologization – that is, the
manipulation – of memory is made possible by the narrative configuration.
‘The major danger’, Ricoeur writes, consists in ‘the handling of authorized,
imposed, celebrated, commemorated history – of official history.’ He then
adds:

. . . the resources of the narrative become thus a trap, when superior powers
take in charge this emplotment and impose a canonical narrative by means
of intimidation or seduction, by fear or flattery. A crafted form of forgetful-
ness is at work here, resulting from the dispossession of social actors of their
originary power to narrate themselves. However, this dispossession does not
happen without a secret complicity that makes forgetfulness a semi-passive
and a semi-active behavior, as we see in the forgetfulness of escape, an
expression of bad faith, and its strategy of avoidance is motivated by an
obscure will to not inform, not investigate the harm committed by the citizen’s
environment, in short [it is motivated] by a will not to know. (p. 580)

Ricoeur then quotes Henri Rousso, ‘for even when it is studied at a societal
scale, memory reveals itself as an organization of forgetfulness’ (p. 582).
The abuse of memory gives birth to a forced, commanded memory.
Likewise, the abuse of forgetfulness gives birth to amnesty, which is forget-
fulness commanded by institutions. It says: ‘nothing has happened’. But the
question of amnesty is intertwined with the question of forgetfulness.
Amnesty is about forgiveness. Amnesty, this abuse of forgetfulness accord-
ing to Ricoeur, intends to end turbulent times and periods. Amnesty is insti-
tutional; it is issued by the Parliament or the head of state, for political
reasons. Therefore this aspect of forgetfulness touches the foundations of
the political. ‘Considered in its declared project, the finality of amnesty is
the reconciliation between citizens who are enemies’ (p. 586).
From memory to history, from history to forgetfulness, and from forget-
fulness to forgiveness, those are not only themes that Ricoeur chose to
examine, but also each is led and, in fact, is linked to the other. Central to
the issue of memory are representation and faithfulness to the past, which
are central in historiography. And central to both is the issue of action. But
why is forgiveness linked to the issue of memory? According to Ricoeur it
is because memory is linked to forgetfulness and both are subject to uses
and abuses. Forgetfulness, like memory, can also be an effort. This is clear
in the case of amnesty, which requires an amnesia, that is, when to forget
means to forgive, for the benefit of civic order. But how so? The issue of

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forgiveness is not and cannot be treated as an issue of representing the past,

Ricoeur contends, but as ‘the enigma of a mistake’ that paralyzes the power
of action of man. Forgiveness is thus the lifting of ‘this existential incapac-
ity’. It is double: it is the paralysis of a mistake and the liberation of an
action. Yet this double enigma is also involved in the issue of the represen-
tation of the past. Ricoeur concludes: ‘If forgiveness has a sense and if it
exists, it constitutes the common horizon of memory, history and forgive-
ness’ (p. 593).
Forgiveness consists in ‘lifting of the punitive sanction, not punishing
when one can and should punish’ (p. 608). However, I find it problematic
to accept the argument of Derrida, quoted by Ricoeur, that forgiveness has
to be granted without a request and especially that one has to ‘separate the
culprit from his act’ (p. 638). Ricoeur footnotes Derrida, discussing the
conditional forgiveness that was not solicited, ‘which henceforth and totally
is not the culprit, says Derrida, but another, better than the culprit. In this
measure, and under this condition, it is no longer the culprit as such that
we have forgiven, but another.’ In this logic, I cannot see how one can forgive
another who is not the culprit. Indeed, how can one forgive her a wrong-
doing she has not done? The comment of Ricoeur, ‘the same, I would say,
but potentially other, not another’, does not make Derrida’s opinion any more
convincing. For the culprit does not only see herself as one, but she does
not even exist anymore. One cannot forgive a subject who has not committed
the crime. The subject is historical; she is the sum of her experiences.
Therefore, one cannot separate the act from its agent. This is why I would
agree with François Hartog for whom: ‘the criminal remains contemporary
with his crime until his death’. This is what he calls, following Yan Thomas,
imprescriptible (Hartog, 2003: 215).
In any case, following Karl Jaspers, Ricoeur distinguishes between
three types of culpability (another name for mistake): the criminal, politi-
cal and moral (Jaspers, 1961). Jaspers, and Ricoeur following in his foot-
steps, give priority to criminal culpability, for this has to do with violations
of univocal laws. These are dealt with by the court, to obtain a punishment.
Ricoeur’s views of the law and the court are official views, meaning he takes
the law for what it declares itself to be. For him, the law is not also a system
of exclusion, nor is it a system of interpretation, like culture, that is specific
to a group and serves its interests and its interests alone, but rather it is a
system of justice that looks at the victim to address a wrong. Ricoeur thinks
the same of international law. But does not law also create wrongs? One
recalls how Gramsci (1971) sees the law as one of the main instruments by
which hegemony is established. For law without power is lawless, and power
creates its own law. While I am writing these lines the French government
has just passed a law that bans the Muslim headdress from state insti-
tutions.4 How is it, then, that the law looks at the victim?
Be that as it may, there is also the political culpability that Jaspers
distinguishes from criminal culpability. It is mainly the type of culpability
of citizens in whose name crimes have been committed. Political

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134 Theory, Culture & Society 22(6)

culpability is collective, but not criminalized, for the idea of a criminal

people should be categorically rejected, says Ricoeur. Though one may ask
whether this holds in a democracy. ‘This type of culpability’, Ricoeur
continues, ‘engages the members of the political community independently
from their individual acts or their degree of agreement with the politics of
the State. Those who benefit from the benefactions of public order must,
after a fashion (in a way), respond to the ills created by the State to which
they belong. Before whom this sort of responsibility is exercised’ (p. 608).
‘Before the victor’ – this is Jaspers’ term, but Ricoeur prefers to say ‘the
authorities representative of the interests and the rights of victims’ and ‘the
new authorities of a democratic state’ (p. 648). Well, does that mean the
same people who are held accountable for the crimes committed in their
names? Is not Ricoeur saying here that the culprit is the same as the judge?
But one cannot but agree with Ricoeur that ‘we should be wary of making
the history of force an international tribunal’. Yet, the question presupposes
that is not already the case. In the light of recent events (see note 1), many
would disagree with Ricoeur. The United Nations, with its system of veto,
exemplifies this very history of force that has been erected as an inter-
national tribunal.
The reader of this impressive book will undoubtedly find more to react
to. For my part, I would like to conclude with one more reaction to one of
its major aspects, which is the division of memory into repressed, forced
and manipulated. One may wonder whether they may not overlap to the point
that the same memory may have different dimensions of repression, force
and distortion. But first, what is distortion if it is not manipulation? And
what is manipulation if it is not the power to change a status and a doing?5
Manipulation thus, like the power to do, is manifest in the three types of
memory Ricoeur discusses. One may even go so far as to suggest that there
is no memory that does not contain within itself the three levels of each
memory: pathologic-therapeutic, practical and ethico-political. Consider, for
instance, the memory of colonialism in France. One can argue that in France
it is repressed, forced and distorted simultaneously. French memory of colo-
nialism is a repressed memory, almost absent from public discourse before
2001, and from the books that examine the issue of memory in French
history.6 In addition, the memory (that is the archived memory) of colonial-
ism and more specifically its latest and most crucial parts are subject to the
60 years law, during which there can be no access to these archived
memories. The reason for this repression is to allow the official version,
which is forced, to reign supreme. For, in fact, there is a forced memory of
colonialism. This forced memory presents colonialism as a positive experi-
ence. ‘The colonial period’, Jacques Chirac said to the French during his
televised presidential campaign in 1986, ‘is the golden age of France, of
which the French should be proud.’ The memory is also distorted without a
doubt as a result precisely of the operation of both repression and force. I
bring in the example of the French memory colonialism because it is related
somehow to Ricoeur’s book. Soon after the book was published, a heated

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Hannoum – Paul Ricoeur on Memory 135

public debate began in France not about colonialism as such, but rather
about whether the French army indulged in the practice of torture during
the Algerian war of liberation. The debate was triggered by an interview in
Le Monde with an Algerian woman who said she had been tortured and
named a former French officer, still alive and well, as being the culprit.
Thus, for once, in the year 2001, one might have thought that France had
finally faced its memory, if not of colonialism, at least of the Algerian war.
About the Algerian war alone Michel Foucault said: ‘it is one of the
most crucial experiences in the history of modern France’ (2000: 258). What
about the entire experience of colonialism? To define itself, France has
chosen to eradicate (or rather to forget) over three centuries from its memory
and to recognize as a founding event of its identity not its expansion in the
world, but its bourgeois revolution. Yet colonialism or its events are totally
absent from the work of memory – I mean French memory, like the work
undertaken by Nora in Les Lieux de mémoire (1984–92), or like the one by
Ricoeur under discussion. But Ricoeur is not really to blame for this silence
(or forgetfulness?), for he proceeds by reviewing others’ works on memory,
and colonialism does not seem to be the object of these studies. Plus, one
may add that his work is a philosophical investigation of the issue of
memory, not a work of historical or social memory. Yet the publication of a
book on memory void of any discussion of the memory of colonialism, in the
midst of an intense debate about the Algerian war, is an interesting coinci-
dence.
In any event, it was clear that the object of the debate was not
colonialism as such, but rather whether torture was legalized and practiced
during the war of liberation. In other words, despite the open debate, the
memory of colonialism was hidden (or rather repressed). Plus, the debate
was only about whether torture was practiced in the period between 1954
and 1962. What about 1830, 1837, 1864, 1871 and so on, to mention just
the most spectacular events, and only in Algeria? At any rate, to put an end
to this debate that seemed to have taken France by surprise (as if colonial-
ism was a humanitarian enterprise and not ‘violence by its very nature’, as
Fanon [1961] put it a long time ago in a book that documented cases of rape
and torture in Algeria) two major decisions were taken by the state. The first
decision consisted in appointing a commission of French professors to inves-
tigate how to teach colonial history, which is basically about how to
‘remember’ colonialism, which means also how to reorganize forgetfulness.
The second decision was taken by the President of France, Jacques Chirac,
to commemorate those killed, colonizer and colonized, during the war of
liberation. Here again, one can see that the state manipulates memory
(history, and forgetfulness) by imposing one and repressing others.
Again I bring up this example also because the memory of colonial-
ism is absent from a book that was first read by its audience in the midst of
a debate on colonial memory, whose author lived the colonial experience
and declares, from the outset, that he has written the book to fulfil a civic
theme.

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136 Theory, Culture & Society 22(6)

Notes
1. I wrote this review between 2002 and 2003, when the war against Iraq broke
out, something I refer to in this text as ‘the recent events’. Professor Ricoeur was
then still alive and the review of his book was intended to be an engagement and
consequently an actuality, i.e. that which is happening. That was not meant to be;
the passing of Professor Ricoeur makes both the book and the review enter the
realm of memory, i.e. that which happened, that which was written, that which will
be ‘remembered’, the lesson of which is that the present is doomed to be past, and
that which is relevant to the present will be transformed into memory. In this specific
case, Professor Ricoeur’s work on memory is itself transformed into a memory, and
along with it what others will react to.
2. This review was written before publication of the English translation by Kathleen
Blamey and David Pellauer (2004), a translation I don’t discuss in this article. All
translations of quotes from Ricoeur (2000) and all other books in French are mine,
except when otherwise indicated.
3. Ricoeur has already examined the concept of event in his Temps et récit. Follow-
ing Louis Mink (1987) and Arthur Danto (1985), Ricoeur thinks of the event as a
narrative, and this as an attempt to make sense of what has happened (see also,
Ricoeur, 1991).
4. Ricoeur himself courageously warned against what he calls la laïcité de l’exclu-
sion. See the article by Monique Canto-Sperber and Paul Ricoeur in Le Monde (11
December 2003: 20).
5. I use the term in the semiotic sense given to it by Greimas:

In contrast to operation (as an action of humans upon things), manipulation

is characterized as an action of humans upon other humans with the goal of
having them carry out a given program. In the first instance, what we have is
a ‘causing-to-be’, in the second a ‘causing-to-do’. (Courtès and Greimas,
1982: 184–5)

6. One cannot object to this idea by citing the work of Charles Ageron and Charles-
André Julien, as both are colonial authors. As for Benjamin Stora, a historian-
journalist, he defends forgetfulness, a policy that has always been adopted by the
state. Colonialism today does not seem to be a favorite topic, even at one of France’s
leading research institutions – the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.
Postcolonial studies, made possible largely by the work of French social theorists,
remain irrelevant in France.
References
Bergson, H. (1913) Matter and Memory. New York: Macmillan.
Courtès, J. and A.-J. Greimas (1982) Semiotics and Language. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
Danto, A. (1985) Narration and Knowledge. New York: Columbia University Press.
Derrida, J. (1999) ‘Le Siècle et le pardon’, Le Monde des Débats December.
Fanon, F. (1961) Les Damnés de la terre. Paris: Maspero.
Foucault, M. (2000) Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–84. New York: New Press.
Freud, S. (1981) The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. London:
Hogarth Press.

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Hannoum – Paul Ricoeur on Memory 137

Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International
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Hartog, F. (2003) Régimes d’historicité: Presentisme et expérience du temps. Paris:
Seuil.
Jaspers, K. (1961) The Question of German Guilt. New York: Capricorn Books.
Mink, L. (1987) Historical Understanding. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Nora, P. (ed.) (1984–92) Les Lieux de mémoire. Paris: Gallimard.
Pomian, K. (1988) ‘De l’histoire, partie de la mémoire, de la mémoire objet
d’histoire’, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 1: 63–110.
Ricoeur, P. (1981) Temps et récit. Paris: Seuil.
Ricoeur, P. (1991) ‘Evénement et sens’, pp. 41–55 in L’événement en perspective.
Paris: EHESS.
Rousso, H. (1987) Le syndrome de Vichy. Paris: Seuil.
Terdiman, R. (1993) Present and Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press.
White, H. (1978) Tropics of Discourse. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press.

Abdelmajid Hannoum teaches anthropology at Simon’s Rock College

(Great Barrington, MA). He is the author of Colonial Histories, Post-Colonial
Memories (2001).

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