Involuntary memory and apprenticeship to truth

Ricoeur re-reads Proust

pp. 105-113

in: Scott Davidson, Marc-Antoine Vallée (eds), Hermeneutics and phenomenology in Paul Ricoeur, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

This chapter examines Ricœur's reading of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, which is developed in the second volume of Time and Narrative. It insists first and foremost on the corporeality of involuntary memory. Highlighting both the strengths and weaknesses of Ricoeur's interpretation, it argues that Ricoeur has not sufficiently emphasized the corporeal dimension of memory that is so crucial in Proustian descriptions, where it is primarily the body that remembers through the senses of taste, smell, touch, etc. Far from being secondary, the anchoring of memory in corporeality is essential to the sudden rediscovery of the time that was believed to be lost forever.

Cited authors

Ricoeur Paul

Proust Marcel