Remembering Paul Ricoeur: 1913-2005

The deaths of Michel Foucault in 1984, Pierre Bourdieu in 2002, Jacques Derrida in 2004, and now Paul Ricoeur on May 20,2005 virtually mark the passing of a generation of French intellectuals who have been enormously influential in numerous academic disciplines world-wide including anthropology.1 In fact, what is most noteworthy of the above four, and a testimony to their originality and intellects, is the difficulty of typifying their publications and research in terms of any one discipline. All of them have made recognized-albeit sometimes contentious-contributions to history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, comparative religion, literary criticism and cultural studies to name just a few. While Ricoeur's influence on anthropology is enduring through copious publications on symbolism, metaphors and the interpretive process more generally, I argue that his emphasis on phenomenology, "local meanings and life worlds," positions his work, in comparison to his post-structural colleagues, as perceptively less central to contemporary anthropology's intense engagement with deconstructing the illusions of "bounded culture" and pursuing the circuits of power associated with transnationalism and globalization. Such views inform and allow for Emily Martin's (1997) critical exploration of medical science's symbolization of female bodies, Rayna Rapp's (1999) cultural elaboration and desconstruction of amniocentesis, Paul Rabinow's (1996) provocative analysis of the genome project or my own (1996) challenge to the claims of oenological science that the esteemed reputation of quality wines follows from favorable climate and soil. Ricoeur's aforementioned essay on meaningful action also challenges historicist interpretations that are solely context dependent and likewise informs Geertz's notion that the interpretation of culture does not imply the presumption that the researcher can get inside another's head to grasp their motives or intentions. Understanding the importance of Ricoeur's view that interpretation is a dynamic and meditative process requires looking more closely at his analogy between social action and texts, a metaphor that surely has had its dominant moments in anthropology.