Jones Revitalizing Theory

8/2/2019 Jones Revitalizing Theory

1/21

101

[Library Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 2, pp. 101121]

2005 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

0024-2519/2005/7502-0001$10.00

THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

Volume 75 APRIL 2005 Number 2

REVITALIZING THEORY IN LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE:THE CONTRIBUTION OF PROCESS PHILOSOPHY

Bonna Jones1

Two main traditions now operate in philosophy, influencing the choice about whichtheories are appropriate in library and information science (LIS). A third tradition,known as process philosophy, gives prominence to human knowledge as an organ-ically integrated, self-sustaining whole, thereby opening another avenue for theeffort to revitalize theory in LIS. Drawing on process philosophy, this article arguesthat library is another level in the process of semantic innovation that includessymbol, word, sentence, and narrative. Because semantic innovation relieson imagining and reading as mediators and is central to the achievement of nar-rative identity, this philosophy opens a fresh perspective on the library in the lifeof a person.

Of the five grand challenges that Michael Buckland sets for library research[1], possibly the most challenging will be the effort needed to revitalizelibrary theory [2]. In a major contribution to this emerging conversation,

John Budd gives a philosophical framework for knowledge and knowingin library and information science (LIS); he advocates phenomenologicalhermeneutics for theory development in LIS [3]. However, in the kind ofanalysis that he undertakes to arrive at this preferred stance, one of thequieter voices in philosophy tends to be overlooked. Process philosophy,

which is a position whose insights show ample promise of increasing phil-osophical utility [4, p. 3], is worthy of consideration if we are looking fornew and fresh ideas in LIS. My purpose in this article is to consider how

1. Senior lecturer in information and knowledge management, School of Business Infor-

mation Technology, RMIT University, Level 17, 239 Bourke Street, Melbourne 3000, Vic-toria, Australia. E-mail [email protected].


2/21

102 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

process philosophy is situated as a living tradition among other philoso-phies and why some recent developments in this tradition have relevancein LIS.

As discussed below, the main traditions of thought that emerged at thetime of Rene Descartes fall into two camps. One gives prominence to realityas an object that we can analyze and discover, and ultimately account for,from the standpoint of mathematical physics. The other argues a contrary

view, that nature is a social construct. While this objective/subjective splithas long been a feature of our ideas, there are thinkers who posit that anentirely different approach is not only possible but also sorely needed atthis time. Advancing the view that nature is processual, process philoso-phers argue that objective and subjective are integral aspects of a universe

that is creative and therefore must be treated as such. Human conscious-ness in this view is both an achievement of and a contributor to thesedynamics that have the capacity to generate new kinds of beings that aremore than the conditions of their emergence [5, p. 1]. In LIS, an examplecan be seen in the activity of reading. Being a vital operation that is trans-formative, reading is worthy of support in its own right, but the substantivenature of what we read must also be included in our accounts of reading[6]. Furthermore, we must be able to consider the level of experience areader brings to the action of reading and the fact that readers themselvescan be so transformed that reading the same work again can be a newexperience. Without a doubt these are theoretically challenging dynamics,as work in various disciplines show, but Budds explanation indicates onlytheir presence [3]; it is arguable that the framework he proposes does not

engage directly with these process/product dynamics or with levels of ac-tivity. In my view, these warrant more attention than he manages to achievein his framework.

Process Thought as a Living Tradition

As described by Nicholas Rescher, a process metaphysics regards the do-main of human knowledge as an organically integrated, self-sustaining

whole [4]. Rather than oppose scientific knowledge, process metaphysicsseeks to accommodate it, but it does so by positing that physical existenceis processual and that processes are the central phenomena that we en-counter in the natural world of which we are part. As described by Arran

Gare, process philosophy is best understood as a tradition of thought thatis advocated by philosophers, scientists, and systems theorists who exalt lifeand, therefore, set themselves in opposition to mechanistic thinking andthe social order based upon it [5]. In this antireductionist theory, boththe natural and human world are seen as consisting of processes, with


3/21

REVITALIZING THEORY 103

objects having a derivative status [7, p. 5]. A fundamental challenge insuch a view is to work out what is involved when we construe the world asa world of processes and then to reformulate both the natural and humansciences on this basis [7].

In the West, process philosophy is usually traced back to Heraclitas inantiquity, but this line has continued through Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Henri Bergson, and Alfred North

Whitehead, who have all contributed ideas that are identifiable with thistradition [4]. Gare now argues that recognition of Friedrich Schelling(17551854) as a process philosopher will enable us to further this traditionand make sense of the possibilities that it opens before us [8]. Indeed,Gare addresses a criticism from Rescher [4] that process thought is yet to

be a well-developed theory centered on a broader contribution than thatof Alfred North Whitehead. According to Schelling [9], a process is de-finable as productivity that consists in opposed activities limiting each other,and he also highlights the importance of levels of activity, an emphasisthat we can see pursued today, for example, in hierarchy theory [10]. Thatis, a hierarchy of activity is given prominence rather than a static hierarchyconsisting of things, as products already achieved. Following this line ofthought, we can appreciate how processes influence each other to formthose conditions in which new possibilities emerge. It is this emphasis onemergence, found in process thinking but neglected in other traditionsof philosophy, that is a major attraction of this philosophy.

While an interest in process philosophy has been sustained over hun-dreds of years, it nevertheless tends to be one of the quieter voices in

philosophy. To promote it, Gare offers a narrative to account for its emer-gence [5] and achieves in this synthesis a coherence to the history ofphilosophy that is lacking in other accounts, such as Budds [3]. Througha schematic of what is possible [5] and a more extensive account [11],Gare centers on the importance of action and theories of action, thusopening the opportunity to rethink the main debate of our era: that post-modernism has arisen in response to the inadequate account that mod-ernism gives, not only of reality but also of its own activity and purpose.

As with many writers, including Budd [3], a central concern for Gareis the crucial dualism that is created and sustained from the ideas advancedby Descartes [5]. Arguing that the most important challenge facing present-day philosophy is to make the emergence of consciousness intelligible,Gare gives his account of this dualism as follows: While Descartes suc-

cessfully inaugurated a new era in which mathematical physics became theparadigm and foundation for all other knowledge, by problematizing con-sciousness he also generated a counter-tradition of thought centred onthe assumption of the primary reality of consciousness [5, p. 4]. Sincethis split, large numbers of philosophers and scientists have taken the


4/21


material world, as conceived by Descartes and reformulated by Sir IsaacNewton, as their point of departure. Their project aims to explain every-thing, including society and human consciousness, from a standpoint ofmathematical physics. This is the tradition characterized by Whitehead asscientific materialism [12]. Even today, the majority of scientists continueto develop and defend this research project.

Opposition to this tradition comes from those philosophers and scientists who take individual or social consciousness as their primary referencepoint; their aim is to explain the realm of nature as a mental, cultural, orspiritual construct. They do not accept the ontological implications of thescientific view of the world at face value, and they are usually dismissed bytheir opponents as idealists. According to Gare, this tradition includes

George Berkeley, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, G. W. F. Hegel,theorists of hermeneutics, neo-Kantians, Hegelian Marxists, and some ofthe pragmatists, phenomenologists, and ordinary language philosophers[5]. Being a much less coherent tradition of thought than scientific ma-terialism, this tradition tends to divide itself; on the one hand, there arethose who assume that consciousness is individual or transcendental andthose who argue that it is essentially social, cultural, or spiritual. On theother hand, there are those who assume that consciousness is contempla-tive, as well as those who insist that praxis precedes reflective or theoreticalthinking. But, according to Gare, what all such thinkers have in commonis a refusal to be bound by the categories of reductionist science and adetermination to do justice to the creativity and freedom of consciousness[5, p. 4].

Arriving at this synthesis and then going beyond it, Gare shows howprocess philosophy both acknowledges the achievements made by the so-called idealists, including the difficulties in their project, and yet still man-ages to give prominence to nature or the physical world, rather than toconsciousness, as the primary reference point for making the world intel-ligible [5]. Having made this move, process thinkers can then allow forthe emergence of consciousness: Much bolder than the idealists, theseare the philosophers and scientists who have argued that whatever itsachievements, the mainstream tradition of science must be fundamentally

wrong, that nature must be such that consciousness, fully appreciated assuch, can be conceived as part of nature. This requires that at least someof the central characteristics of consciousness must be central character-istics of all that exists, including non-living physical entities. Accordingly,

they have called for a transformation or revolution in science on the basisof a new conception of nature from which consciousness could evolve [5,p. 5].

While Gare acknowledges that there are complexities and anomalies notadequately accounted for by this brief characterization of modern thought,


5/21


nevertheless he contends that the history of modern philosophy and sci-ence becomes properly intelligible only when construed in this way [5].He argues that this sketch of a revisionist history of philosophy could bethe basis of a more coherent history than we have seen to date. So, buildingon the kind of account that we also see in Budd [3], Gare goes considerablyfurther [5]; he contextualizes certain philosophical traditions from the

viewpoint of todays world and the conditions we now face, wherein awhole of knowledge approach is not only called for but also viable; heretrieves from current thinking a position that offers possibilities; and hesuggests that we review the work of certain thinkers, such as Schelling,given these moves. Whereas Budd concludes that the categories central toLIS theory should be essence, being, interpretation, perception, self and

other, and intentionality [3], Gare offers us a broader theory [11]. Callingfor development of more adequate categories to define the nature of thecosmos, he argues that matter, space, time, and motion should be replacedby activity; order and potentiality; process, structure, and event; cause; andspatiotemporal position. From Gare we have a sense of the organicallyintegrated, self-sustaining whole that is human knowledge in motion, andbeyond this we have nature as the force that shapes human endeavor [11].

The importance of Gares contribution can be further appreciated if weattend to Alasdair MacIntyre, who offers a context in which these ideascan be evaluated [13]. MacIntyre contends that one can make a contri-bution to a tradition only if one uses narrative as ones form; that is, onemust tell a story, and it has to be adequate if one is to defend ones positionin an ongoing debate or conversation. In other words, in a tradition of

ideas, the opposed activities [9] are positions made in an ongoing argu-ment or conversation; a narrative is then an achievement or product of aprocess of synthesis [14] that is open to the forces operating in the ar-gument [15]. MacIntyre cites a good example of this when he shows thatGalileos contribution to the development of science is superior becauseit enables the work of all his predecessors to be evaluated by a commonset of standards [13, p. 460]. That is, because of Galileo, the history oflate medieval science can finally be cast into a coherent narrative. In thescientific tradition, the narrative of science is rewritten in such a way thatprevious narratives that shaped the tradition are accounted for. Further-more, from these ideas tradition can be construed as a process of narrativetransition. Described in terms of a definition given by Raymond Williams,tradition is the process of handing down [16]; we can say that the nar-

ratives have similarity to their predecessors but are also changed in theprocess of handing down because they are reauthored or refigured.

Taking Gares contribution as correct [5, 11] and process philosophy asthe most adequate account at this time in the tradition of philosophy, we

would conclude that the very metaphysics we are working with is in more


6/21


need of revision than Budds [3] account achieves. More important, wecan see from the above that we already have sufficient ideas to ask whatthese developments open up for LIS. According to Gares main argument,

we must account for that which we have not yet been able to address, whichis the emergence of consciousness [5]. This is a large philosophical ques-tion, of the order of the big questions that have shaped civilization, andthereby calls for the correspondingly large conversation we see played outin philosophy. Beginning on a smaller scale with the contribution of Budd[3] and taking this larger conversation as the context, I shall offer belowan example of the possibilities that could emerge from these ideas.

Choosing a Viable Path Forward

Through his emphasis on essence, being, interpretation, perception, selfand other, and intentionality, Budd [3] seems to situate his work withinthe tradition that takes consciousness as the primary reality. We see, forexample, that he offers the following: The framework that will be artic-ulated . . . is admittedly somewhat eliminativist; it does, through evalua-tion, turn us from paths (such as deterministic scientism) that lead no-

where. That said, the framework not only allows, but necessitates,examination of the essential elements of our work [3, p. 247]. Assumingmy interpretation is correct and remembering that the clarity of his ideasmay very well be compromised given that the tradition he espouses is aless coherent one than the deterministic scientism he rejects, we could

nevertheless conclude that he gives prominence to elements and not toprocess. In other words, there is little emphasis on the interpretive process

whereby new meaning is created; the dynamics are neglected despite hiscontention that part of the goal for librarianship is the organization ofinformation to enhance meaning [3, p. 1].

Paul Ricoeur has done considerable work to advance our understandingof the process of interpretation, which he regards as being a contributorto a process of semantic innovation, but Budds treatment of this philos-opher fails to make the most of this: Ricoeur acknowledges the complexityof interpretation. For one thing, we have to deal with polysemy; many

words have more than one meaning. Further, sentences may be ambiguous.The hazards we come up against are not insurmountable, however. In mostinstances we can determine which of the polysemic meanings in a word

apply from the context of the whole work [3, p. 283].It is not clear from this quote why the range of Ricoeurs contribution

is overlooked. As Budd [3] points out, we should not presuppose a struc-tural analysis, for this presupposition, identified with the mathematicalphysics approach considered above, reduces our options for action. How-


7/21


ever, this is not all that Ricoeur [14] has to say. Yes, we must critique hiswork, but if we limit ourselves to this operation, we miss the possibilitiesthat open up and, hence, are poorer. Words are part of sentences, butmuch more can be said about this in relation to the process of makingmeaning. Similarly, sentences are parts of narratives, but, again, more canbe said about this. These are levels in a hierarchy of action, which is theprocess of semantic innovation. Arguably, library also belongs in thisprocess as an achievement of and contributor to this hierarchy.

In other words, if we take a process thinking approach to the work ofRicoeur and if we consider how his work shows us a theory of action, then

we are in new territory. In this territory, we can ask afresh what these ideasopen up for LIS and which other thinkers have similar ideas that can be

integrated to generate more coherent theory.

Semantic Innovation

The Contribution of InterpretationRicoeur [17] begins with symbolism, having already shown that symbolismsfind their expression within language. He defines a symbol as any structureof significance in which a direct, primary, literal meaning designates, inaddition, another meaning which is indirect, secondary, and figurative and

which can be apprehended only through the first [18, p. 98], and hedefines interpretation as the work of thought which consists in deci-phering the hidden meaning in the apparent meaning, in unfolding the

levels of meaning implied in the literal meaning [18, p. 98]. The symbol,therefore, invites our participation because it calls for an interpretation,precisely because it says more than it says and because it never ceases tospeak to us [19, p. 27]. At this level of a hermeneutics of interpretation,Ricoeur argues that symbol and interpretation become correlative con-cepts; there is interpretation wherever there is multiple meaning, and itis in interpretation that the plurality of meanings is manifested [18]. Inother words, at the level of symbol there is a gap, a distance between thesymbol itself and what the symbol stands for. It is at this level that inter-pretation is the movement between them; we can say that as soon as thereis distance, there is relationship and the possibility for this relationship tobe productive.

The dynamic that is interpretation incorporates the nonmethodical mo-

ment of understanding and the methodical moment of explanation [18,20, 21]. Understanding . . . precedes, accompanies, concludes, and thusenvelops explanation. Explanation, in turn, develops understanding analyt-ically [20, p. 142]. As there is a dialectical relationship, interpretationcannot be reduced to either side of the dialectic; and yet, these cannot


8/21


stand alone. Just as language, by being actualized in discourse, surpassesitself as system and realizes itself as event, so too discourse, by enteringthe process of understanding, surpasses itself as event and becomes mean-ing [20, p. 78].

Hence, it is via the action of interpretation that new meaning is achievedor created in the context of existing meanings, but these existing meaningsare neither unstructured nor without differentiation, nor are they static.

As agents, we belong to language at the level of world, but we do notact in isolation, as the dynamics at this level have their own life in termsof language; there is both a horizon and a background for the everydayinterpretation.

The Contribution of NarrativeWorking from the above, it is clear that meaning is created at the level ofa word; that is, an interpretation finds expression as a form of language,one level of which is the word. At the level of a sentence, more meaningis created, for a sentence is more than just an aggregate of words. At thelevel of two or more sentences, brought together, the beginnings of anarrative emerge, and again we have new meaning created. That is, anarrative is more meaningful than an aggregation of the meanings inindividual sentences.

Defined in process terms, narrative operates as an action of synthesis ora grasping together of the heterogeneous within language: With nar-rative, the semantic innovation lies in the inventing of another work ofsynthesisa plot. By means of the plot, goals, causes, and chance are

brought together within the temporal unity of a whole and complete ac-tion [14, p. ix]. In other words, narrative involves semantic innovation; aprocess of innovation or creativity is present because a newly inventednarrative relies on emplotment to create new understanding.

In order to create his narrative theory, Ricoeur [14, 21, 22] begins withmimesis, which is generally defined as the process of imitating or repre-senting something; then he extends this meaning to include the activeinvention of something new. Rather than render mimesis as mere im-itation, there is a sense in which the audience is living inside the expe-rience; mimesis is a series of operations whereby what is produced in theaction is an organization of events by an emplotment that is not a copyor identical replica but a new emplotment of events. The three stages ofmimesis include the familiar preunderstanding we have of the order of

action, followed by entry into the realm of composition, and finally theachievement of a new configuration that refigures the preunderstood orderof action and contours the field of action such that the process is a spirallinking back into itself.

The dynamic nature of the emplotment process is given a central place


9/21


in Ricoeurs theory, and he emphasizes that it should not be confused withthe actual structure of a narrative [14]. Emplotment enables individualagents to interpret and understand events that happen in the world ofaction.

Using the analogy of reader and text (wherein the latter is very broadlydefined as an objectification or product of action), Ricoeur argues thathuman experiences, grounded in the world of action, take on the natureof prenarratives [14]. These prenarratives are in a state of prefiguration,and their articulation becomes the narration of an experience, which hecalls configuration. Once narrated, the possibility exists for refiguration,or reauthoring. In terms of relationship, these are the three moments inthe mimetic operations that make up the process of emplotment. They

enable us to be conducted from one side of the text to the other [14,p. 53] through the action of reading (where reading is a mediator in aprocess). Ricoeur argues that configuration and refiguration have a facultyof mediation enabling a work to lift . . . itself above the opaque depthsof living, acting, and suffering, to be given by an author to readers whoreceive it and thereby change their acting [14, p. 53]. Because it is thereader who takes up the unity of the traversal from prefiguration (mi-mesis

1) to refiguration (mimesis

3) by way of configuration (mimesis

2), this

being done by way of reading [14], and because Ricoeur argues that nar-rative is central to human endeavors to make sense of the world, these

would seem to be important operations for LIS to consider in theoreticalterms.

Expanding on the above, we would say that experience is first appre-

hended in prefigured form; it comes as narratives in the making [14,pp. 5758]. This is because life itself has a prenarrative character andhuman experience is not a series of disconnected events but rather hassome order. This order enables us to begin the process of making sense.For example, an agent has experience that is grounded in a relationship

with a cultural setting or a practical field. This cultural setting or practicalfield is a shared reality, one that has order and structure, which takes formas language, convention, and norm. To some extent, experience is alsopresent as the little stories of everyday life [23]; rather than being pre-narrative in character, there is already narrative form [24]. But anothercontributor to our theoretical understanding of this level of action showsthat individual and social actions are indeed lived narratives. Carr showshow narrative is a form that inheres in action even before the advent of

the storyteller to tell the story [24].The configurational act is one of composition or grasping together. It

is an act that extracts a configuration from that which is otherwise a suc-cession of events [14]. In the series of operations, configuration is theturning point or crucial pivot; it is the mediation between prefiguration


10/21


and the rest of the process. What is at stake . . . is the concrete processby which the textual configuration mediates between the prefiguration ofthe practical field and the refiguration through the reception of the work[14, p. 53]. This moment of articulation may have a range of expression,including speech and writing, and it is through this expression that con-figuration opens up the experience, which itself has come in prenarrativeform, to the process of emplotment.

This step mediates between individual events and the story as a whole;it brings together the heterogeneous factors involved, what Ricoeur callsthe complexities of concordant discordance. It draws from this manifoldof events the unity of one temporal whole [14, p. 66]. Furthermore, inthe operation of configuration there is the expectation that the process

of emplotment will have an end point, a conclusion to the process fromwhich it can be perceived, even momentarily, as forming a whole. Theconclusion occurs at the third operation but is expected during the second.It is at this step that we can speak of imagination in the sense that an actof configuration is the work of the productive imagination [14]. In termsof the process, configuration gives way to the next operation, which isrefiguration, or mimesis

3.

Refiguration, or reauthoring, marks the intersection of the world ofthe text and the world of the hearer or reader [14, p. 71]. It is theintersection of the world as configured by the text and the world of action,or it can be understood as the return to the world of action by the individualagent or reader. Narrative has its full meaning when it is restored to thetime of action and of suffering in mimesis

3 [14, p. 70]. Entry into a

practical field in this sense involves entry into a field of references thatthemselves are part of the process. (Note that suffering is defined as thecounterpart to the action of another; hence, the meaning is broader thanthat found in everyday language.)

An example of refiguration is the capacity to make a narrative or inventa new plot from the same events but to lead to different actions; for ex-ample, a person who reads a book may subsequently refigure importantevents in her life to achieve a new synthesis involving connections notmade before. Ricoeur emphasizes that the spiral of narrative making isendless because we are able to carry the mediation past the same pointa number of times, but at different altitudes [14, p. 72]. Hence, reau-thoring involves taking an active part in the authorship of our own lives.

The Contribution of LibraryIn detailing this process of semantic innovation, I have a purpose, whichis to suggest that we extend what Ricoeur has written. Whereas in his theory,the next level of action is genre [14], we could similarly argue that libraryis also a level in this hierarchy of action. Making libraries describes what


11/21


we do as our contribution to this process of making meaning. Librariesare achievements of but also contributors to the process of semanticinnovation.

Given the above, the process of semantic innovation belongs to theemergence of consciousness, which we have already seen is not currentlyexplicable without a major shift occurring in philosophy [5]. Because ofthis, a consideration of consciousness opens up many questions about howto proceed. For example, just what we mean by consciousness is noto-riously hard to define, partly because of the split described above [5]. Evenan authoritative companion to philosophy, which we could reasonably ex-pect to help with this, says at the beginning of its entry on consciousness,it resists definition [25]. However, if we take a process thinking approach,

construing objective and subjective as being aspects of a universe that iscreative, and we apply this to LIS, a possible departure point is deciding which level of activity to address [10]. For example, we could elaborateon our contribution to the process of semantic innovation in theoreticalterms; we could consider the contribution of libraries to scholarship, tonation-states, or to individual lives, as these are part of a fabric of culturalinstitutions.

As a number of possibilities do open up with these ideas, the focus inthe remainder of this article will be on this level of an individual life; thatis, I shall concentrate on activity at the level of person. Taking my cue from

Wayne Wiegand [2], in LIS, it will be possible to make the link back tothe ideas of Ricoeur and to gain a fresh perspective on the call for advancesin LIS theory.

Library in the Life of a Person

With regard to individual lives and libraries in the life of persons, Wiegandpoints to the failure of information science to construct models of apersonal information economy for individuals, ones that analyze howindividuals appropriate information in efforts to make sense of the worldaround them in their everyday lives [2, p. 24]. He argues that, relative toother disciplines, researchers in LIS have not benefited from the criticalthinking that has been available; he cites, for example, work done on therelationship of power to knowledge. Invoking Douglas Zweizig, he callsfor a switch in emphasis to the library in the life of the user and away from

the user in the life of the library, which has so captured our imaginationsto date. Furthermore, he concludes that the arena of study we call in-formation science continues to be defined by the technology that is char-acteristic of the field as we know it today. He argues that, built on expertiserather than authority, this discourse, with its focus on technology, renders


12/21


people and their culture invisible; those not using the technologies at theheart of information science are being ignored [3].

Compare these comments with those of Gare, and immediately thereare resonances: Individuals who utilize the inherent reflexivity of the nar-rative form to question the stories they have been socialized into, to con-sider alternative versions of these stories, to refigure their lives in accor-dance with their chosen versions of the stories of which they are a part,

who thereby take responsibility for their lives, are the creative agents ofculture, society and history. Such people are the authentic authors of theirown becoming [26, p. 7]. But narrative is prominent in this quote, notinformation. Even more important, it is narrative as action, rather thannarrative as object, that is given center stage.

One of Gares overarching arguments is that philosophy has a contri-bution to make to our potential to address the global ecological crisis [5];he argues that a process metaphysics can and indeed must mount a chal-lenge to scientific materialism. In making this argument, he gives an im-portant role to narratives, suggesting that we take into account the workof MacIntyre, whose book After Virtueprovides a useful starting point [27].Not only does it tell the story of the dire straits in which philosophy nowfinds itself in Anglophone countries; it also shows the importance of nar-ratives and of a healthy narrative-making process. On this basis, Gare sug-gests that the missing link between the current practice of philosophy,including its current plight, and prephilosophical discourse, is story [5].For MacIntyre [13], the major questions that arise in everyday discoursehave to be understood in terms of where we are up to in the project of

creating the best philosophical account so farthat is, a unified, inte-grated, and rational account. According to Gare [5, 11], the account shouldalso be systematic, but there are few philosophical candidates adequate tothe task. It is now necessary to treat the divide considered above as aproductive space and not as a distance that forever identifies two camps.

In order to choose between different philosophies, we must be able toinhabit and understand rival, historically developing traditions of thoughtfrom the inside [11]. But we must also put these into perspective and seethem in relation to each other; this is where narrative theory comes to thefore.

MacIntyre shows how narratives constitute social life: I can only answerthe question What am I to do? if I can answer the prior question Of

what story or stories do I find myself a part? We enter human society, that

is, with one or more imputed charactersroles into which we have beendrafted [13, p. 216]. While there continues to be argument over the claimthat stories are lived before they are recounted and that life is stories beinglived out, the work of Carr shows that this is so, for the overall temporalstructure of action is narrative in character; life is an inchoate narrative


13/21


[24]. Human reality is not just a sequence because it can be demonstratedthat narrative coherence inheres in even the most elementary experienceor action [24, p. 88]. Narrative coherence is an essential structural featureof the very fact of having an experience or performing an action [24, p.88]. Hence, order is present in events even before a narrative is imposedon them, and the real difference between art and life is not organization

versus chaos, but rather the absence in life of that point of view whichtransforms events into a story by telling them [24, p. 59]. This emphasison activity is also found in MacIntyre: Narrative is not the work of poets,dramatists and novelists reflecting upon events which had no narrativeorder before one was imposed by the singer or the writer; narrative formis neither disguise nor decoration [13, p. 211]. For MacIntyre, human

actions are themselves enacted narratives; for Carr, it is in living out a lifethat we achieve a grasp at the level of attempting to make meaning orsense of relationships [24]. According to Gare, following this line ofthought shows us the following:

Actions are lived stories. The more complex the action, the longer its duration andthe more people involved, the more obviously this is the case. Actions such asbuilding a community or developing our understanding of the cosmos can tran-scend generations, and Carr showed the central importance of narratives to suchactions. Institutions are largely made up of patterns of symbolically organized ac-tions crystallized and sustained as part of such long-term complex actions. . . . Justas individual actions consist of a hierarchy of smaller, component actions whilebeing components of broader actions, stories are made up of smaller, componentstories while being parts of broader stories. People are born into social worlds

already constituted by stories, including stories of institutions, and must take a placewithin these, but in taking up a place, they are put in a position where they canquestion and transform these stories, including the ultimate goals they project.That is, through stories people are recognized as subjects and are thereby sub-jected by the logic of these stories, but at the same time they can be empoweredto entertain or imagine alternative narrative emplotments with alternative visionsof the future and alternative ways of living, to configure the stories of their ownlives and to participate in refiguring, thereby becoming the co-authors of, thesebroader stories. . . . The stories of particular people are lived out in a world ofunfolding stories of different durations, ultimately extending to the stories ofnations, civilization and of humanity over centuries. [28, pp. 1415]

If it is through stories that we gain a grasp of how to act, the questionthen is how these stories orient a person to live a good life. For what are

we reaching? An individual life story and its process of creation are em-bedded into a matrix of stories that includes those of family, profession,organizations, and nation-states. How do these institutions contribute tothis orientation to a good life? The narrative unity achieved in an individualidentity is defined to some degree by the narratively constituted traditions


14/21


of institutions and communities. And it is here that Gare extends Mac-Intyres argument to clarify the relationship of philosophical discourse andeveryday philosophical questions, for the big questions that confront us inour own projects are addressed through these narratives that are consti-tutive of the traditions. A living tradition . . . is an historically extended,socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about thegoods which constitute that tradition [27, p. 222). Similarly, Ricoeur ar-gues that our heritage is not a sealed package we pass from hand tohand, without ever opening, but rather a treasure from which we draw bythe handful, and which by this very act is replenished. Every tradition livesby grace of interpretation, and it is at this price that it continues, that is,remains living [19, p. 27].

That is, consistent with the process of interpretation as we see it elab-orated above, an interpretation is achieved and offered in the argument.But, as shown by MacIntyre, one cannot make or defend a position in anargument unless one uses narrative [13]; in effect, one tells a story toaccount for ones position. And beyond this, there is the reauthoring orrefiguring of those narratives that constitute institutions.

When Budd argues that complex action . . . does not spring fromintuition or tacit reliance on reaction to stimuli, but on . . . thinking andknowledge [3, p. 1], we will find ourselves in agreement if we also agree

with Gare, as shown above, but we will be concerned that Budd fails toadequately account for this complex action. To address this, narrative the-ory, as expounded by MacIntyre, Carr, and Ricoeur, could be integratedinto LIS more fully than Budds account, as it stands, permits. By making

an opening for further work in this way, we can attend more fully to thelevel of action that Wiegand [2] points to, that of person, thereby elabo-rating on the library in the life of the user. Again, it is Ricoeur who offers

valuable theory, this time on narrative identity [29].

Narrative Identity

Ricoeur does not situate his theory of a self, as in person, in either ofthe two camps described by Gare [5]; rather, he seeks to overcome thedifficulties presented by these traditions. He construes self as a project,

which nevertheless can result at any point in a material outcome; for ex-ample, an account is narrated and can thereby take form as a text. He

argues that we achieve a sense of who we are by taking many detours intothe culture in which we live. These detours have the spiral form we seeexplained above; that is, there is no meaning without a return to thepractical field, which, in this instance, is our own life. These ideas warranta closer look.


15/21


In considering action and its counterpart, suffering or being acted upon,Ricoeur contends that there is a problem of identity that is central toquestions in the narrative process that involve who; such questions in-clude who acted? who intervened? what was done to whom? and on

whose behalf was the action taken? These questions pertain to self orselfhood, and Ricoeur addresses the problems they raise by extendingnarrative theory to account for identity [14, 22, 29, 30].

The key who question is who am I? and it is appropriate to say thatthis is dialectical; we cannot contribute to processes unless we make anaccount of ourselves, unless we can say Its me here. And the doubleallegiance we make is that we belong to language, traditions, social spaces,and culture but we also live out this account as a developing project or

becoming-text. We both make an account and are ourselves the centralcharacter in that account. As explored above, the action of compositionis central to the narrative process, which is an integrating process. Byintegrating process I mean the work of composition which gives a dynamicidentity to the story recounted: what is recounted is a particular story, oneand complete in itself [31, p. 21]. Furthermore, Ricoeur is not alone inthinking that life is a story or stories, for Carr [24], MacIntyre [13], Bruner[32, 33], Polkinghorne [34], Freeman [35], Kerby [36], and White [37]are all worth reading on how a sense of our own identity is narrated intoexistence.

Ricoeur suggests that, for a person, there are a series of dialectics atwork in this process of identity narration [29]. First, there is explanationand understanding operating in dialectic; a process of interpretation in-

volves a threefold movement of interpretation, understanding, and expla-nation. In other words, as we saw above, a person interprets a symbol,understands it, and then explains its meaning; Ricoeur argues that thishappens regardless of whether we privilege one or the other of two kindsof eventsinterpretations or factsbecause both are present and part ofone set of operations. Second, Ricoeur attends to the importance of thedialectic between self and other, which he suggests is multiple in the sensethat it is characterized by experience of ones own body, the self of reci-procity or dialogue with other people, and the dialogue with what can bethought of as the other within. The last, he argues, is experienced asconscience. Third, there is the dialectic of identity, which is shaped bynarrative in time. Each of these contribute to a dynamic relationship be-tween sameness and selfhood, by which he means that we can be identified

in time as the same person, but we also change over time as we developselfhood.

For Ricoeur, reading is the mediator between the pole of phenome-nology, on the one hand, and that of semantic structure, on the otherhand [14]. He argues that the latter can be described in relation to au-


16/21


thorial strategies, the semiautonomous nature of the text, and a theory ofthe readers response to the author and text.

We saw above how Ricoeur argues that meaning is an achievement ofthe interpretive process; he also argues that a text is an achievement ofthe narrative operations described above [14]. In describing a text as anachievement, certain characteristics of the text become clearer, character-istics that are not so apparent when we are confined to a narrow definitionthat a text is a written document standing alone as a product (or object)that is cut off both from the relationship to its production and from themode of its use. Rather than treat a text entirely as an object, Ricoeuremphasizes that what is present is a dialectic of objectification and un-derstanding that is first understood at the level of the text.

It is at this level of text that we are able to speak of a unit of meaningas having a semiautonomous existence. A text is to some extent detachedfrom the conditions of its production, but it is not completely autonomous.Rather, it is mediation in three dimensions: between man and world, be-tween man and man, and between man and himself. According to Ricoeur,the first mediation is referentiality, the second is communicability, and thethird is self-understanding [31]. He shows how hermeneutics describes, as

well as the interpretation of texts, the whole activity at the point of inter-section of the (internal) configuration of the work and the (external)refiguration of life [18].

The reader of the text is absent when the author is writing, but we canalso speak of the absence of the writer at the event of reading. Ricoeurargues that a text replaces dialogue that would otherwise connect the voice

of one to the hearing of another [21]. This semiautonomy is analogousto fixation by writing to the extent that Ricoeur argues that we can usefixation to encompass all comparable phenomena in the sphere of thetransmission of discourse. As he shows, discourse is language as event orlanguage as used, but discourse that is fixed in a manner analogous to

writing signals the presence of text. In this way, Ricoeur extends the con-cept of text to include all document-like objectifications [38]. Fixationis more to do with autonomy of the text than it is to do with what constitutesthe text. So, it is apparent that a text is a semiautonomous achievementof discursive operations and that it is available to be read in another placeand time by an audience. For Ricoeur, this is the semantic autonomy ofthe text. Appropriation by the reader as audience, which is discussed below,is the counterpart of the semantic autonomy of the text [39, 40]. On the

way toward appropriation, the reader interprets the text through the me-diation of reading [14].

A text transcends its own production; specifically, it transcends the psy-chological and sociological conditions of its own production. Ricoeur showshow this semantic autonomy is threefold in nature [21]. First, there is


17/21


autonomy from the intentions of the author; in other words, what the textsignifies is no longer what the author intended. We could say that theauthor has limited control over the meaning that the reader appropriates.Second, a text becomes autonomous with respect to the cultural situationand the social conditions that pertained at the time of production. Third,the audience for whom the text was written is transient; unlike dialogue,the original addressee is no longer present. Ricoeur argues that the workitself creates an audience, which potentially includes anyone who can read[41, p. 298], and he suggests that a text is open to an unlimited series ofreadings.

This openness to interpretation is what recontextualizes each readingin the series of readings, which is another reason why Ricoeur speaks of

the text as having only semiautonomy. Great texts, such as those of Shake-speare, are open to recontextualization through new audiences and newreading encounters. The closure that is achieved in such texts is onlytemporary. Ricoeur argues that it is at the level of the text that we can bestunderstand human objectification in the form of structural explanationand the hermeneutic understanding that is the counterpart of such ex-planation [42].

At this level, which is a hermeneutic of the text, the relationship of theworld of the text and the world of the reader is of primary interest. Thetext does not contain a self-enclosed world in which we, as readers, goseeking only the intentions of the author; rather, it is a proposal for a

world, a projected world that we as readers are invited to inhabit [39].Ricoeur speaks of the world in front of the text as what we interpret, rather

than what is behind the text: The world of the text is not a self-enclosedentity, rather it points to a possible world a world I could inhabit, whereI could actualize my own possibilities in so far as I am in the world [43,p. 349].

By extending these ideas on reading to a hermeneutics of self-under-standing, Ricoeur is able to argue that identity is a temporal structure thatrests on narrative, as well as a project that is ongoing for individuals duringtheir lifetime. Reading is central to this project because it is only in readingthat the dynamism of configuration completes its course; in other words,the passage from prefiguration via configuration to refiguration results intransfiguration of worlds. In this relationship of worlds, it is the person asreader who takes this journey [21]. His thesis is that the process of com-position, of configuration, does not realize itself in the text but in the

reader, and under this condition configuration makes possible refigurationof a life by way of the narrative [44, p. 430]. As part of this, a person canbe called upon to make an account of herself, and such an account, Ricoeurargues, involves a positing of a beginning, a middle with its highs and lows,and an ending [14]. Through composition, or configuration, this account


18/21


is dynamic; we can weave different plots about our lives. Ricoeur remindsus that just as it is possible to compose several plots on the subject of thesame incidents . . . so it is always possible to weave different, even opposed,plots about our lives [30, p. 248]. But, simultaneously, a life can have thequality of being singular and complete. In terms of a hermeneutics of self-understanding, Ricoeur best captures this when he argues that to under-stand oneself is to understand oneself as one confronts the text and toreceive from it the conditions for a self other than that which first un-dertakes the reading. Neither of the two subjectivities, neither that of theauthor nor that of the reader, is thus primary in the sense of an originarypresence of the self to itself [44, p. 17]. For Ricoeur, it is through thistask that we achieve, by dint of effort, a dynamic balancing of a sense of

self, which is, on the one hand, unified and semiautonomous at the levelof a social structure and, on the other, incoherent and seemingly locatedat the intersection of many different stories, some of which see us cast asa character in other peoples stories. Ricoeur argues that it is through thisprocess that we become self, human and adult, by appropriating meaningsthat reside outside or have been objectified, in the works of culture, andthrough making those meanings into our own version of meaning [18].That is, we make an intelligible or meaningful account of ourselves.

Ricoeur captures this dynamism, arguing that narrative identity thusbecomes the name of a problem at least as much as it is that of a solution[30, p. 179]. In other words, there is a constant question to be answered:

Who? We act on that question from the perspective of our position inhistory and culture, that is, from within the circle of interpretation, which

can be construed as a world of action with temporality in the form oftraditions, and ongoing practices in the form of fields of action [15].

Because of the above, we can see how living beings, construed as persons,are actively emergent beings living out a process of narrative identity. Inthe terms used by Gare, we can appreciate how persons are processes ofbecoming that are emergent inside the cultural dynamics but that the latteralso includes institutions that are themselves processes of becoming. Fur-thermore, if we appreciate that library is not just an aggregate of texts butis rather a level of semantics at which new meanings are being generated,

we start to gain a foothold for new theory development.

Library and Reader

We saw above how configuration is the work of the productive imagination[14]. This imagination is not only rule governed; Ricoeur argues that itconstitutes the generative matrix of rules [14, p. 68]. The imaginationsynthesizes in a narrative way that connects understanding and intuition


19/21


such that it is possible to speak of a schematism of the narrative function[14, p. 68]. This schematism in turn is constituted within a tradition, wheretradition is understood as an interplay of innovation and sedimentation;that is, there is a history of interpretation in conflict with interpretationnow [38]. Beyond this, Ricoeur argues that tradition in turn is referencedto paradigms encompassing form, genre, and type and that paradigmsconstitute the grammar that governs composition of new works [14, p.69]. This narrative tradition enriches the labor of imagination in the op-eration of configuration. A library, when defined as a synthesis of narratives,both embodies and signifies acts of imagination. Such acts can operate atdifferent levels; for example, they are inherent to the levels of the hierarchyof activity we see above. They are inherent in personal acts and in cultural

acts. The library is an enabler of new meanings and active participant inthe creation of worlds in front of the text. Given the above, new workcould take these ideas much further in LIS and well beyond the frameworkthat is currently offered [3].

But with regard to philosophy, we could give prominence to the processwhereby the domain of human knowledge operates as an organically in-tegrated, self-sustaining whole. We could do this because we value thehealth of the processes themselves, by which I mean semantic innovationat the levels of word, narrative, and library, whereby the operations ofreading and imagining mediate in the constitution of individual lives. Ar-guably, no other profession has this brief. It could also be said that wealready practice as if these narrative theories are true.

Hence, our choice of philosophies should not be limited to the two mainphilosophies identified by Budd but rather could take up ideas from pro-cess thinking, which is a quieter but nevertheless relevant philosophy to

which LIS should attend. By valuing the processes and articulating thiswith better abstractions more congruent with our action, we not only fur-ther our own project; we also sustain a vital engagement with the projectsof individuals. We more clearly articulate the library in the life of the user,to use the words of Wiegand [2].

REFERENCES

1. Buckland, Michael K. Five Grand Challenges for Library Research. Library Trends 51

(Spring 2003): 67586.2. Wiegand, Wayne A. Tunnel Vision and Blind Spots: What the Past Tells Us about the

Present; Reflections on the Twentieth-Century History of American Librarianship. Library

Quarterly 69 (January 1999): 132.

3. Budd, John M. Knowledge and Knowing in Library and Information Science: A Philosophical

Framework. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2001.


20/21


4. Rescher, Nicholas. Process Metaphysics: An Introduction to Process Philosophy. New York: StateUniversity of New York Press, 1996.

5. Gare, Arran. Process Philosophy and the Emergent Theory of Mind: Whitehead, LloydMorgan and Schelling. Concrescence: The Australasian Journal of Process Thought 3 (2002):112. http://farleighcom.ozstaging.com/ajpt_papers/vol03/03_gare.pdf (last accessed

April 22, 2005).6. Jones, Bonna. Narrative Identity as a Central Theme in an Ethics of Librarianship.

Australian Library Journal 50 (May 2001): 12131.7. Gare, Arran. Human Ecology, Process Philosophy and the Global Ecological Crisis.

Hawthorn: Swinburne University of Technology, n.d. Available at www.swinburne.edu.au(last accessed April 8, 2004).

8. Gare, Arran. The Roots of Postmodernism: Schelling, Process Philosophy, and Poststruc-turalism. In Process and Difference: Between Cosmological and Poststructuralist Postmodernisms,edited by Catherine Keller and Anne Daniell, pp. 3154. New York: State University ofNew York Press, 2001.

9. Schelling, Friedrich W. J. System of Transcendental Idealism (1800). Translated by Peter Heath.Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978.

10. ONeill, Robert V.; DeAngelis, Donald L.; Waide, J. B.; and Allen, T. F. H. A HierarchicalConcept of Ecosystems. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.

11. Gare, Arran. Nihilism Inc.: Environmental Destruction and the Metaphysics of Sustainability.Como, NSW: Eco-Logical, 1996.

12. Whitehead, Alfred N. Science and the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1928.

13. MacIntyre, Alasdair. Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative and the Philosophy ofScience. Monist60 (October 1977): 45472.

14. Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer.Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

15. Bourdieu, Pierre. Practical Reason. Cambridge: Polity, 1998.

16. Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana, 1988.

17. Ricoeur, Paul. Creativity in Language: Word, Polysemy, Metaphor. In The Philosophy of

Paul Ricoeur: An Anthology of His Work, edited by Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart,pp. 12033. Boston: Beacon, 1978.

18. Ricoeur, Paul. Existence and Hermeneutics. In The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: An Anthologyof His Work, edited by Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart, pp. 97108. Boston: Beacon,1978.

19. Ricoeur, Paul. Structure and Hermeneutics. In his The Conflict of Interpretations: Essaysin Hermeneutics, pp. 2761. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974.

20. Ricoeur, Paul. From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics. Translated by Kathleen Blameyand John B. Thompson. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991.

21. Ricoeur, Paul. What Is a Text? In [22], pp. 10524.


23. Ricoeur, Paul. Reply to Peter Kemp. In The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, edited by LewisE. Hahn, pp. 39598. Chicago: Open Court, 1995.

24. Carr, David. Time, Narrative, and History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.

25. Consciousness. In Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by Ted Honderich, 15253.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

26. Gare, Arran. Narratives and Culture: The Role of Stories in Self-Creation. Telos, no. 122(2002): 80100.

27. MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 2nd ed. London: Duckworth,1985.


21/21


28. Gare, Arran. Defending Democracy against Neo-liberalism: Process Philosophy, Democ-racy and the Environment. Concrescence: The Australasian Journal for Process Thought 5(2004). http//farleighcom.ozstaging.com/ajpt_papers/vol05/ajpt_v05-13_gare.htm(lastaccessed April 22, 2005).

29. Ricoeur, Paul. Oneself as Another. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1992.


31. Ricoeur, Paul. Life in Quest of Narrative. In On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation,edited by David Wood, pp. 2033. London: Routledge, 1991.

32. Bruner, Jerome. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1986.

33. Bruner, Jerome. Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.34. Polkinghorne, Donald E. Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences. Albany: StateUniversity

of New York, 1988.

35. Freeman, Mark. Rewriting the Self: History, Memory, Narrative. London: Routledge, 1993.36. Kerby, Anthony P. Narrative and the Self. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.37. White, Michael. Re-authoring Lives: Interviews and Essays. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre, 1995.38. Ricoeur, Paul. The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text. In [22],

pp. 144-67.39. Ricoeur, Paul. Pastoral Praxeology, Hermeneutics and Identity. In Figuring the Sacred:

Religion, Narrative and Imagination, 30314. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995.40. Ricoeur, Paul. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth: Texas

Christian University, 1976.41. Ricoeur, Paul. Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology. In [22], pp. 270307.42. Ricoeur, Paul. A Response by Paul Ricoeur. In Paul Ricoeur Hermeneutics and the Human

Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation, edited by John B. Thompson, pp.3240. London: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

43. Ricoeur, Paul. Narrated Time. In A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, edited byMario J. Valdes, pp. 33854. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1991.

44. Ricoeur, Paul. Explanation and Understanding. In [22], pp. 12543.

Documents

Jones Revitalizing Theory