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		EDITORIAL
		By the hand of Ricoeur and Arendt: Identity and History. Speaking of Historical Memory Lucília Nunes Doutorada em Filosofia, Mestre em História Cultural e Política e Mestre em Ciências de Enfermagem, Enfermeira Especialista em Saúde Mental e Psiquiátrica. Professora Coordenadora, Escola Superior de Saúde, Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal (Portugal) Mail delivery: Escola Superior de Saúde, Campus do Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal. Estefanilha - 2914-503 Setúbal (Portugal) Manuscript accepted by 26.10.2007 Temperamentvm 2007; 6
How to cite this document
Nunes, Lucília. By the hand of Ricoeur and Arendt: Identity and History. Speaking of Historical Memory. Temperamentvm 2007, 6. In </temperamentum/tn6/t3807e.php> Consulted

The navigation for the memory done by Paul Ricour trip down the memory lane taken by Paul Ricoeur in La mémoire, l'histoire et l'oubli, brings together the phenomenology of memory, the epistemological discourse and the hermeneutics of historical condition. The three of them appear to be linked in the text and symbolise the problem of representing the past, which is at the same time both at risk of oblivion and entrusted to oblivion's guard, just like an image constitutes an enigma, an "eikon that gives presence of an absent thing marked by the stamp of the previous one".¹ Therefore, the risk of predominance of the "empire of the oblivion" appears to be divided between the threat of extinguishment and the safety of the resources of the anamnesis.

However and more importantly, memory can design one's capacity to remember for the reason that memory is related to the basic powers of an individual, namely speaking, acting, narrating, and self-recognising, and it directs us towards one's own anthropology. As a result, "remembering oneself is nothing but the ability to recite without having to relearn what has already been learnt",² drawing a connexion to the pedagogy of memory at an ethical-political level. Where it acquires a double responsibility that gathers in a future and imperative form, that is thirst for truth and practical use.

Ricoeur approached the concept of oblivion (from which futility emerges) in a very particular way, as "an attack against memory's reliability (.), a mistake, a gap".³ When studying memory's ethical-political level, Ricoeur defines the duty to remember as a justice imperative. In other words, his discourse on memory goes along "two parallel lines":⁴ That of thirst for truth (memory's epistemic fidelity) and that of practical use (observable in different memorisation techniques).

With reference to the justice imperative mentioned above, the duty of memory surpasses the mere moral problems. When it comes to using and reflecting on what has been forgotten a casual relation with the right (and eventually the need) to forget stands out. We "face the delicate articulation between memory's discourse and oblivion's, as well as between guilt and forgiveness".⁵

Hannah Arendt understands "memory as the organ of the spirit for the past".⁶ She bases this affirmation on the idea that an event which is looked upon from the present necessarily loses its "air of contingence under the certainty of being now a finished fact, of having become part of our lived reality".⁷ This notion becomes clear in the world of actions and also in anything which concerns objects made by humans (both art objects and tools).

The expression "life history" became familiar in research,⁸ education,⁹ testimonial literature¹⁰ and historiography during the second half of the twentieth century. According to Hannah Arendt's, a life's history (bios-graphein) is some kind of reunion between human-related events, where humans are the agents of the action, and the circumstances of human relations. The result is a history¹¹ where each individual is the hero or the main character. We cannot understand why and how the told and written history become a series of "facts" for both the narrator and the historian without them limiting themselves to being mere messengers if we are not able to coordinate their main function with the political activity, which is to meet the challenge of the fragility of human issues.

Each individual life, from birth to death, can be told as a story, with beginning and end. Each individual becomes the agent, although he or she will never become neither the author nor the producer of his or her own story. It is possible to identify and isolate the initiator of a particular movement although "it will never be possible to point him/her out as author of the final result".¹² At the very best, it will only be possible to identify and isolate the agent who started the movement. He/she will then become the "hero" of the story although, in any case, he/she will not be declared as the one and only author of the final consequences.

It must be pointed out that our "hero" is not lacking in qualities or heroic deeds. In other words, his/her best prove of courage is his/her "personal disposition to act and speak, to be part of the world and to start his/her own story".¹³ Each and every one of us can choose whether or not to be part of the world, whether to hide away or to leave our hiding place; when one chooses to come out and show his/her own individuality then this action becomes his/her best "prove of courage and, even, audacity".¹⁴

This personal effort to reveal one's individuality reflects the value of day-to-day realisation, which takes us back to the difference between being alive and being completely alive. However, "the act of telling stories reveals the sense, without committing the mistake of defining it, causes the agreement and reconciliation with things as they really are".¹⁵ The quality of the revelation emerges from the action and the discourse and it is represented and reinforced by repetition.

In order to confirm one's own identity it must be understood that each individual depends on the others, and it is through this union or friendship that each person's individuality gets confirmed as irreplaceable.¹⁶ We come into the world when we get born; our appearance (recognition) places us in to the world in relation with the Other and the Other's assumption of I-You, which immediately becomes "us".

In society, everyone must be able to give an answer to the question about what is (what his/her role or function is; the answer will never be "I am unique"), and the question about who is. It is very tempting to turn to the idea of the person, the idea of the mask through which everyone makes him or herself heard according to each role and public moment by characterising every different situation through the "one chosen mask" and by knowing that it is this mask the one which configures and shows (and it also and fundamentally is) what one is not.¹⁷

The person manifests his/herself, above all, through his/her actions, which are brief. If these actions were bound to be remembered then there would have to be witnesses who were able to remember them or, otherwise, they would disappear forever. Human beings can barely remember their most futile words, actions and activities, and keep them in their memory. Instead, it is through the historical narrative that they sometimes get to remain in the world; through the poet and through the historian.

The memory is in a such important form that oblivion is one of the "most serious crimes of human relations"¹⁸ and, with respect to spiritual activities, it is memory that feeds human thinking (through remembrance), the image or object-of-remembrance in the absence of the sensible object. Memory "is the mother of all Muses; remembrance is the most frequent and most elemental experience of thought".¹⁹ In order for us to think, we must evoke absent things, which are not perceived through the senses. Those absent things, when evoked by the memory, do not appear to us like we perceive them through the senses. Instead, our memories appear as some kind of spell of the imagination, which transforms what is sensible/perceptible in what is not sensible/perceptible. Without the memory, "actions, words and ideas would loose their being part of the reality and would disappear forever like they never existed".²⁰

All of this takes us to reflect about one of the risks of the modern era: we are constantly "threatened by oblivion". Forgetting the history would put in risk the dimension depth of human existence, given the fact this "depth cannot be reached by men but through memory".²¹

We must not forget that, for Arendt, a life's course is told only when it is finished. In other words, the meaning of "a finished action can only be known once the action itself is finished, becoming then a story able to be told".²² The apology of narrative comes with the union of both word and action; a revelation of a unique individuality within a plural humanity of unique beings.

If the oblivion is the lack of memory and the loosing of memories, then we face several losses because of the perturbations of the memory: the relationship with others through language or communication (aphasia), the relation with our own body and the sensible world (aphraxia), the loss of all existence (amnesia). This complete loss can, in some situations (for example is case of Alzheimer), change one's own meaning (own sense of self), in wich is most profound identity.

Memory gives a meaning to the past, differentiating between present and future, fighting bravely for its existence in the role of the narrator. Memory's evocations shape and keep the past, protect its identity and provide immortality for the remembering of the death. What is worth remembering will never die. As a matter of fact. death does not arrive with old age but with oblivion.

Therefore it can be suggested that present historians work for the recovery of memory, and that their role is to mediate between stories and historical truth; between what remained and what can be recovered.

Historians develop their work during their own life, seizing the relation between the present memory (of an event) and the historical past (of the same event), depending on their idea of the future of this past (more specifically, the present). Therefore, the work of the historian has the double task, that consists of the memory and of the oblivion.

Understanding that "all thinking emerges from memory".²³ Then memory must be condensed and clarified within a conceptual structure which can be developed and maintained for the reason that both experiences and events' stories are easily lost. The opposite of oblivion is not the memory but the truth and it is necessary to be cautious because actions and speeches take the risk of plunging into their own inherent futility, unless they are commented, that is, nourish and maintained: what place us before the truth of memory and the memory of truth.

Bibliography

1. Ricoeur P. L'histoire, la mémoire, l'oubli. Paris: Seuil, 2000; 3.
2. Ricoeur P. Op. cit.: 28. «Ne pas l'avoir oubliée, c'est pouvoir la réciter sans avoir à la réapprendre».
3. Ricoeur P. La mémoire, l'histoire, l'oubli. Paris: Seuil, 2000; 537.
4. Ricoeur P. Op. cit.: 107.
5. Ricoeur P. Op. cit.: 111 ("Nous serons alors confrontés à la délicate articulation entre le discours de la mémoire et de l'oubli et celui de la culpabilité et du pardon").
6. Arendt H. A vida do Espírito II - Querer (The Life of the Mind - Thinking, 1971). Trad. João C. S. Duarte. Lisboa: Instituto Piaget, 1999; 20.
7. Arendt H. Op. cit.: 37.
8. "Life history" focuses on the subject and his ability to provide determined pieces on information about his life course and the articulation of particular stories whose extended dimensions help to explain an event. It consists in narrating the singularity of what was lived as a group. (Cf. Denzin, N.K. Interpretative biography. Newbury Park: Sage, 1989).
9. Josso MC. Cheminer vers soi. Lausanne: Editions l'age d'Homme,1991; Kristeva J. Hannah Arendt: Life is a narrative. (Hannah Arendt: Life is a narrative. The Alexander Lectures, 1941). Trad. Frank Collins. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001.
10. Testimonial literature is that which was written by the survivors of a catastrophe, for example, the Nazi concentration camps. Several authors can be cited as an example: Primo Levi, Jorge Semprun, Paul Celan and Albert Camus.
11. Las historias "résultats de l'action et de la parole, révèlent un agent, mais cet agent n'est pas l'auteur, n'est pas producteur. Quelqu'un a commencé l'histoire et en est le sujet au double sens du mot ; l'acteur et le patient, mais personne n'en est l'auteur ». Arendt H. A condição humana (The Human Condition, 1958). Trad. Roberto Raposo. 1ª ed. Lisboa: Relógio d'Água Editores, 2001;207-8.
12. Arendt H. Op. cit.: 234.
13. Arendt H. Op. cit.: 236.
14. Arendt H. Op. cit.: 236.
15. Arendt H. Homens em tempos sombrios (Men in Dark Times, 1969). Trad. Ana Luísa Faria. 1ª ed. Lisboa: Relógio d'Água Editores, 1991; 126.
16. Arendt H. Les origines du totalitarisme. Le système totalitaire (The Origins of Totalitarism, 1951). Trad. Jean-Loup Bourget, Robert Davreu e Patrick Lévy. 1ª ed. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1972 ; 228 ("dépends entiérement des autres; et c'est la grâce salutaire de l'amitié pour les hommes solitaires (...) qu'elle restaure l'identité qui les fait parler avec la voix unique d'une personne irremplaçable").
17. Arendt H, Kohn J (editor). Responsibility and Judgment. New York: Schocken Books, 2003; 13 ("It is in this sense that I can come to terms with appearing here as a "public figure" for the purpose of a public event. It means that when the events for which the mask was designed are over, and I have finished using and abusing my individual right to sound through the mask, things will again snap back into place. Then I, greatly honoured and deeply thankful for this moment, shall be free not only to exchange the roles and masks that the great play of the world may offer, but free even to move through that play in my naked "thinness", identifiable, I hope, but not definable and not seduced by the great temptation of recognition which, in no matter what form, can only recognize us as such and such, that is, as something which we fundamentally are not").
18. Arendt H.A vida do Espírito. Op. cit.: 296. A propósito de Gurion, "la fidelidad a los amigos, a todas las personas que conocía, a todas las cosas que le gustaban, se volvió hasta tal punto la nota dominante de su vida que nos sentimos tentados a afirmar que el crimen que le resultaba más extraño era el del olvido, tal vez uno de los crímenes más graves de las relaciones humanas".
19. Arendt H. A vida do Espírito. Op. cit.: 97.
20. Arendt H.A condição humana. Op. cit.: 11.
21. Arendt H. Entre o passado e o futuro (Between Past and Future, 1954). Trad. Mauro Barbosa de Almeida. 5ªed. S. Paulo: Editora Perspectiva, 2001;131.
22. Arendt H. Homens em tempos sombrios (Men in Dark Times, 1969). Trad. Ana Luísa Faria. 1ª ed. Lisboa: Relógio d'Água Editores, 1991; 32.
23. Arendt H. Sobre a revolução (On Revolution, 1963). Trad. I. Morais. Rev. Manuel Alberto. 1ª ed. Lisboa: Relógio d'Água Editores, 2001; 271.

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