Poul Ricoeur, Time and Newrabive - U3
Narrated Time
‘an immortal human jes to the rank ofa postula
ugh wii
igure of our ancestors, the icon of
his
fe the documentary stock of an i
that produces the
Arcntves, Documents, TRACES
‘The notion of a trace consiues « new connector Between the
ion arising out of phenomen
Aca eres, pose
wat do we mean by archives?
If we open the Encyclopaedia Universalis and the Encyclopaedia Brisan-
the former we read, “archives are d
by the set of documents that res
physical or moral person.” The I
the organized body of records produced
rrogate its remains, how to question them. In this respect,
the most valuable traces are the ones that were not intended from our informa
ans’ interrogations are guided by the theme chosen
ing documents produced by an
goal of conserving or preserving
‘even if this choice is made onl ms of the presumed usefulness
documents, and hence of the activity they stem from. The Eneyelopaedi
116 urNarrated Time
between documents and monuments has served as the touchstone of this criti-
cism. AS Jacques Le Goff reminds us in an insightful article in the En:
jaudi, archives were for a long time designated by the term
‘or example, the Monumenta Germaniae Hisiorica, which
826. The development of positivist history at the end.
hand the beginning of the twentieth centuries marked
document over the monument. What makes a monument suspect, even though
the document over the monument. This new
tack against the conditions of historical prod
conscious intentions. In this sense we must say with Le Gof
bating, The data in a data bank are suddenly crowned with a halo of the same
authority as the document cleansed by positivist criticism. The illusion is even
‘more dangerous in this ease. As soon as the idea of a debt to the dead, to
people of flesh and blood to whom something really happened in the past,
cory loses it
kind of scholarly
ological detour destined to lead fo an enlargm
118
Historical Time
its encounter with the monopoly exercised over speech by the powerful and
the clerisy. For history has always been a critique of social narratives an
this sense, a rectification of our common memory. Every documentary re
tion lies along this same trajectory
the sense of having passed a certain place)
the sense of having happened). This is not surpris-
the fact that the passage
no longer is but lexity over the idea
of the vestigial image as some
of a trace and its extension to a thing.
People from the past left these vestiges. However they are also the products of
their activities and their work, hence they are those things Heidegger speaks
of as subsisting and at hand (tools, dwellings, temples, tombs, writings) that
ry8 ‘more durable support than the
‘of human beings. In part is because humans worked,
stone, or bone, or baked clay tablets, or papyrus,
‘or a computer's memory, that their works outlive
| their works remain, But they remain as things
among other things. This “thing
tion. It introduces a relationship of cause to effect
and the marked thing. So the trace combines a rel
ing that made it
nes that also carry the
beyond
for the trace, as conserved and no longer in the process of being laid down, to
‘a dated document.
us to take up again the
120
Historical Time
phenomenology seeks in vain to understand and
the temporality of Care.
ferret relying only on
ware of the problem. His
ees an autonomous epi
he proposes to this enigma redou
certainly correct when be states that what no longer is, is te world
Which these “remains” once belonged, as equipment. As he say
tion
tual relationship when he adds 0
between da-gewesen and ver}
guish these two terms, we have to skt
ing from the first. We m
in the secondary
‘of and we begin to pose unsolvable questions concerning tl
tion of this iliation of meaning a
account for what Heidegger
‘The remains of the past, wi
leading example of what is world-historic
selves what seem to be the carriers of the significa
But can we avoid anti sematic of
very heart of the proble ‘we are to account for this derived
ra