“Difficult Forgiveness” .. The book “Memory, History and Forgetting” and the French elections

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Paul Ricoeur’s book La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, Paris, Seuil, 2000, also published in an Arabic edition by George Zitani from Dar Al-Kitab Al-Jadid in 2009, is considered one of the basic books that deepened the consideration of the concepts of memory, history, and forgetting from a philosophical, interpretive, and communicative perspective.

Ricoeur had previously been interested in the philosophy of memory in his book “Time and Narrative” (1983), when he showed some of the boundaries that memory can establish between disabled memory, manipulated memory, and compulsory memory. Disabled memory is that which cannot be easily accessed, and its disability is due to a trauma or painful experience, and therefore it suffers from the consequences of forgetting, which makes re-enacting the past difficult, even impossible. As for manipulated memory, it is the memory that has been deliberately distorted through lying or deception, all in order to change past events to suit a specific narrative and not others. Finally, compulsory memory, which imposes itself on us without our will, and is the result of a painful experience, so it dominates our thoughts and feelings, and it is difficult to free ourselves from it.

Ricoeur asserts that these three types of memory are interconnected and intertwined. An obstructed memory can become a manipulated memory if we try to deliberately reconstruct it. A manipulated memory can become obligatory if we believe in it and what its content constitutes. Meanwhile, an obligatory memory can become an obstructed memory if we try to suppress or forget it. In short, memory is not just a storage of information, but a dynamic process that shapes our identity and influences our understanding of the world.

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Paul Ricoeur relied in his statement of the limits of memory on the concept of a just memory policy, the basis of which is that mutual recognition between different individuals and groups is important in order to have a vision of a just memory policy that requires listening to and understanding the narratives of others, even if they differ from our beliefs. Ricoeur shows that mutual recognition is necessary for reconciliation and peaceful coexistence, hence the power of what he also calls narrative memory, which he does not consider an objective record of the past, but rather a dynamic process that allows us to form our own narratives about the past through our recollection and reinterpretation of it; on this basis, there must be space for telling multiple narratives of the past without excluding or marginalizing any of them.

Hence, a central question arises: Can remembering be separated from forgetting?

The answer to this question can only be negative. Remembering is inseparable from forgetting, as each shapes the other. What we choose to remember affects what we choose to forget. What is important in Ricoeur’s analyses of the politics of just memory is the need to carefully balance what we remember and what we forget. Care here is a moral responsibility towards a past that we must – when remembering it – approach understanding in a just manner to ensure that mistakes that were previously committed are not repeated.

Paul Ricoeur’s conception of a just memory policy seems like an idealistic conception that is difficult to achieve. However, it provides a useful option for thinking about how to deal with the past in a just manner in issues related to justice and reconciliation. There are many examples in this context: national and international amnesty policies, crimes of genocide, etc. These are complex phenomena that threaten the stability of states and societies. However, the conception of justice within the option of a memory policy remains subject to our understanding of the idea of ​​justice, about which Ricoeur says that it is extracted from the remnants of memories of trauma so that justice becomes a form of attachment to hope and looking forward to the future; since any conception of justice in a memory policy requires mutual recognition between individuals and different groups to promote reconciliation between them as a result of the conflict or injustice they have suffered.

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However, there are still many factors that may cause memory to become fragile, which Ricoeur presents in his analyses and limits them to three basic factors:

The first is the relationship with time, given that memory is dynamic and constantly changes, affected by our experiences. We may forget some details, or reinterpret events in a different way, which affects the process of remembering. Secondly, because it is selective, it does not retain all the details, but rather chooses what we want to remember and forgets what we do not want. Finally, since it is subject to interpretation, we usually interpret our memories according to our beliefs and values, and in most cases, these interpretations may lead to distorting or falsifying the meaning of events.

Second: Conflict with the other: The conflict over memory leads to political and social conflicts through which each group seeks to impose its own narrative regarding past events, which leads to distorting the facts. It may even reach the point of manipulating memory by spreading misleading information or inciting hatred between groups, or obscuring it by erasing its traces or preventing it from expressing its narrative.

Third: The relationship with the legacy of violence, because it has the ability to distort memory and leave deep traces that fuel feelings of fear, anger and sadness.

Paul Ricoeur evokes these factors in order to emphasize that every call to remember is fraught with confusion when it is understood as a call to abbreviate historical events. Therefore, he does not hesitate to declare that he is aware of such a danger, especially since his book “Memory, History, and Forgetting” can be considered a plea to defend memory as a record of history in general.

How do our memories shape our identity? What happens to our identity when we lose our memories? How accurate are our memories? When is it necessary to remember? Is it possible to perceive an objective truth about the past? And how? Or is history merely a subjective narrative shaped by the historian’s point of view?

In the conclusion that Ricoeur wrote for his book “Memory, History and Forgetting”, and entitled “Difficult Forgiveness”, some elements of the answer to the previous questions are presented. Forgiveness represents the common horizon of memory, history and forgetting, since loyalty to the past is not a given, but rather a wish that, like all wishes, can be disappointed or frustrated. In this regard, Ricoeur presents a profound philosophical view of forgiveness, as a complex act that goes beyond tolerance and forgetting; true forgiveness does not stem from forgetting the past, but from reinterpreting and accepting it, whether it is a matter of passing forgiveness, which is a type of superficial forgiveness that aims to overcome past events without dealing with them in depth, or mutual forgiveness, which requires an honest dialogue between the victim and the perpetrator, with the aim of rebuilding trust between them.

Ricoeur asserts that forgiveness is not easy, but it is possible. It is the dividing line between pardon and amnesia. It is a cure for the damages of the past and a way to end its mourning.

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Final note

As I was rereading pages from Paul Ricoeur’s book “Memory, History, and Forgetting,” trying to understand the relationship between this philosophical trilogy that formed the basis of one of the most important intellectual works of the twentieth century, I was following from time to time the French legislative elections, and how their results moved in one week from the far right to the far left; and what accompanied that of sophistic dialogues between political actors from all spectrums; sophistic dialogues in the Platonic sense of their concern with teaching the skills of rhetoric and persuasion by focusing on appearance rather than substance; as the sophists taught their students how to use logical arguments and rhetoric to convince others of their point of view, regardless of its correctness or morality.

What does my talk about Paul Ricoeur’s book have to do with the French legislative elections?

Here is the statement.

In his youth, Emmanuel Macron worked as an assistant editor to Paul Ricoeur – along with others – during the preparation of his book “Memory, History, Forgetting”, so he dedicated a special thanks to him, embellished with this phrase: “… and finally, Emmanuel Macron, to whom I owe a sound critique of the writing and the formulation of the critical apparatus of this work”, just as he thanked the rest of the assistants who accompanied him in his intellectual project, especially François Dosse and Thérèse Duflot…

The philosopher did not know at the time that his student would become the youngest president of the French Republic, against both the left and the right. I pondered this phrase by Ricoeur, in which the philosopher seems to owe the rising politician “a sound critique of the writing and the formulation of the critical apparatus” of his book.
to meditate

And to another conversation.