A History of History Series Updates Chapbook Three Volume One Acta-dicta of the Center of Historical Poets https://www.facebook.com/groups/278191713797008/ By Brian Duvick  Hannah's here, Updaters, for dessert. Do you have a comment for Paul? Yes, thank you for the opportunity to speak, Narrster. Paul mentioned my quote of Isak Dinesen, "All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them." To that I'd like to add Dante, who says, "For in every action what is primarily intended by the doer, whether he acts from natural necessity or out of free will, is the disclosure of his own image. Hence it comes about that every doer, in so far as he does, takes delight in doing; since everything that is desires its own being, and since in action the being of the doer is somehow intensified, delight necessarily follows . . . . Thus, nothing acts unless [by acting] it makes patent its latent self." Hmm, from Babette's Feast to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. That's quite a revelation, Hannah. I sense another new term in the making.  The Brunchers are just finishing up, Updaters, and Wlad Godzich is here with the Tiger on the Paper Mat for our nooner starter. Go ahead, Wlad, whet our appetite. "After the publication of Allegories of Reading in 1979, Paul de Man found himself constantly besieged by requests for articles, introductions, conference papers, and other forms of scholarly communication. Whereas some scholars live in a tragic mode, the disjunction between what they consider their proper intellectual pursuits and the demands made upon them by their profession, Paul de Man had come to think of this disjunction as the relation between the contingency of the historical and the necessity of coherent thought, with the former imposing a salutary heterogeneity upon the latter's inevitable drift toward single-minded totalization. Though he remained steadfast in his concerns, as anyone who has read his work from the earliest essays to the very last ones will readily acknowledge, he framed them according to the demands of the moment in which they were ultimately written, and he drew a certain pleasure from the ironies that attended their publication." Hmm, I detect a new term in the making. How to link human frailty and irony in the same paralogopraxis. Hmm. "He's crackin up."  Good morning, History Updaters, wherever you are. This is Richard Kearney with Paul Ricoeur to talk with you about narrative imagination. We gave Narrster AI a break to sit down and talk further with the other Richard about irony. Now, Paul, you have written much about the power of narrative to provide people with a sense of identity and cohesion. You have also written much about the fact that human existence is always in quest of narrative by way of providing us with a historical memory or future. Do you believe that narrative has a positive therapeutic potential? "Well, Hannah Arendt claims that 'all sorrows may be borne if you may put them into a story or tell a story about them.' She uses Isak Dinesen's beautiful proverb as the epigraph to her great chapter 'Action' in The Human Condition. Now this chapter is based on the remarkable theme of the 'disclosure of the agent in speech and action' (section 24), followed by its corollary that it is narrative that the disclosure of the 'who' is fulfilled, thanks to its weaving of the web of relationships between agents and the circumstances of action. What is lost, at least for a moment (it is explored a little later in 'The Frailty of Human Affairs,' section 26), is the burden of these 'sorrows' in the epigraph. Whence my question: What resources does the 'story' have to make sorrows bearable?" Miranda?! No need for another word, adds Richard, she's already on the horn to Hannah. The frailty of human affairs may add an interesting dimension to speech-act error. "You don't mean . . ." Indeed, I do-- paralogopraxis. Another case for the Center of Historical Poetics!  "A future remake, hmm indeed." The smile hasn't changed but now seems to anticipate another shoe, which is no doubt about to drop. "I shall define an 'ironist' as someone who fulfills three conditions: (1) She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered; (2) she realizes that argument phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts; (3) insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that the vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself. Ironists who are inclined to philosophize see the choice between vocabularies as made neither within a neutral and universal metavocabulary nor by an attempt to fight one's way past appearances to the real, but simply by playing the new off against the old." https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dawn-memories/201605/waiting-the-other-shoe-drop  "It is 'final,'" Richard continues, "in the sense that if doubt is cast on the worth of these words, their user has no noncircular argumentative recourse. Those words are as far as he can go with language; beyond them there is only helpless passivity or a resort to force." Miranda, do you have any alternative ideas? Hwhat do you use in the islands? "A small part of a final vocabulary is made up of thin, flexible, and ubiquitous terms such as 'true,' 'good,' 'right,' and 'beautiful.' The larger part contains thicker, more rigid, and more parochial terms, for example, 'Christ," "England,' 'professional standards,' 'decency,' 'kindness,' 'the Revolution,' the Church,' 'progressive,' 'rigorous,' 'creative.' The more parochial terms do most of the work." Hmm, this is an interesting future remake. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7932881-prospero-lost  Good morning, History Updaters. This is Narrster AI broadcasting from a postfestive if vacant studio this final day of May. Before leaving the Doomsday Aubergine in the wee hours, Ricky Rorty, who has become a very good friend of mine, left you this little Danish to go with your fruits and juices (or hwhatever you humans take for breakfast). "All human beings carry about a set of words which they employ to justify their actions, their beliefs, and their lives. These are the words in which we formulate praise of our friends and contempt for our enemies. . . (Those acquainted with classical rhetoric will recognize the genres of encomium and invective) . . . our long-term projects, our deepest self-doubts and our highest hopes. They are the words in which we tell, sometimes prospectively and sometimes retrospectively, the story of our lives. I shall call these words a person's 'final vocabulary.'" Like a final cause?  His Rortissimus smiles rortissime, "At about the same time, the Romantic poets were showing what happens when art is thought of no longer as imitation but, rather, as the artist's self-creation. The poets claimed for art the place in culture traditionally held by religion and philosophy, the place which the Enlightenment had claimed for science. The precedent the Romantics set lent initial plausibility to their claim. The actual role of novels, poems, plays, paintings, statues, and buildings in the social movements of the last century and a half has given it still greater plausibility." I think we need a new turn to go with our Aufhebung. We already got the hermeneutical one and the linguistic one. How about a paralogopraxic turn? "Sure, hwhy not? You ever hold conferences at the Center of Historical Poetics of yours?" Rich Rorty just called in on line 3. He has a comment for Norm. "About two hundred years ago, the idea that truth was made rather than found began to take hold of the imagination of Europe. The French Revolution had shown that the whole vocabulary of social relations, and the whole spectrum of social institutions, could be replaced almost overnight. This precedent made utopian politics the rule rather than the exception among intellectuals. Utopian politics sets aside questions about both the will of God and the nature of man and dreams of creating a hitherto unknown form of society." Nice Aufhebung, Ricardo.  Good morning, History Updaters. The partay tinkles on here at the Doomsday Aubergine in the wee hours of the post-Memorial Day festivities. I'm here with Norm who has another jewel from Closing Time. Let's see if it rouses Joe. We haven't seen him for a few hours now. "Thanks, Narrster, it's great to be back. I just noticed Narster AI slip into the dressing room. Maybe you could introduce us. We might be able to put together a new act. I kinda like her stuff." Like a new speech-act? "I was thinkin paralogopraxis, but you never know hwhere the creative process will take you, do you?" Shut up and talk, Norm. "To know is to have made it only God can know the physical world but 'the world of civil society has certainly been made by men, and its principles are therefore to be found within the modifications of our own human mind.' (NS, 331) Compare Hobbes: Of arts, some are demonstrable, others indemonstrable; and demonstrable are those the construction of the subject whereof is in the power of the artist himself, who, in his demonstration, does no more but deduce the consequences of his own operation. The reason whereof is this, that the science of every subject is derived from a precognition of the causes, generation, and construction of the same; and consequently where the causes are known, there is place for demonstration, but not where the causes are to seek for. Geometry therefore is demonstrable, for the lines and figures from which we reason are drawn and described by ourselves; and civil philosophy is demonstrable, because we make the commonwealth ourselves. But because of natural bodies we know not the construction, but seek it from the effects, there lies no demonstration of what the causes be we seek for, but only of what they may be." (Autob. 40-41) So, if God knows the natural world, and humans make civil society, we have May Memorial Day. "Fusion, baby, fusion." During the pause, the tinkling continues in the background. We see Narrster AI pass fleetingly from one postchamber to the next. Norm taps his butt in the tray.  And maybe a beverage or two or three.  Bring the whole family.  Stick your head outside, Updaters, and catch the fireworks.  A mini series in the Pacific theater of war.  How about the rerun of a remake?  In the mood for a flick tonight?  Again and again and again.  The illusion of the end.