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positions of the subject. For memory and history, it is as if the absence of mourning couldnot be satisfied with a representation that is only narrative. In Memory, History,Forgetting, it is about reclassifying narration among other processes of representing thepast:But, in reclassifying narrativity in the way we are going to discuss, I want to [put anend to] one misunderstanding suggested by the upholders of the narrativist school andtaken for granted by its detractors, the misunderstanding that the configuring act thatcharacterizes emplotment would as such constitute an alternative in principle to causalexplanation. (p. 186)It is not that historical causal explanation is a positivistic block inimical to plot. On thecontrary, it is that it includes as much interpretation as any narrative. Ricoeur thus aimsto show that interpretation is in play at all levels, from the documentary research throughto the historiographic representation by way of the various hypotheses that enable us tomake human interactions intelligible. And that narrative is one figure among others of therepresentation of absence. It is perhaps that the epic, that others tell of us in the thirdperson, must sometimes give way to tragedy, where the witness and even the actor comesforward personally, who can say: “I was there,” even though they are no longer there, andto share the responsibility of giving back to the past that which is owed.2. Just MemoryWe will now move ahead one more step in our topic, even though we have not lost sightof it from the outset. I spoke of the political problem of just memory, as the second (butnot secondary) thread that runs through Memory, History, Forgetting. It is here thatRicoeur has attracted the most critical readings to this point, with regard to his notion ofthe “duty of memory.” Not that he rejects it categorically like Todorov. The duty ofmemory has an importance for him, and is a concern for a project of justice, evenimperative if it is about returning justice to the other. (pp. 86-92). Moreover, one willnotice that for Ricoeur there is no symmetry between memory and forgetting, and that heobjects to the idea of a “duty of forgetting,” not only with regard to amnesty (pp. 500-506), but even in the political project of restoring civil peace. I will note in passing thatsomething like a duty to forget still exists, mentioned in the beginning of the text of theEdict of Nantes, which took France out of the wars of religion, or in the oath not toremember misfortunes, which led Athens out of civil war. 8 It is why, as a purely politicalconcept, which I would distinguish from a metapolitical or even antipolitical conceptionappropriate to tragedy, I would readily propose a moderate advocacy of amnesty, in spiteof Ricoeur’s criticism.But this last here prefers to put forward the acceptance of the divided city, if not actualcivic dissensus. We will come back to this. Whence then this polemic against the duty ofmemory, beyond the fact that most detractors didn’t read the book and are themselveslimited to allusions? It is that Ricoeur expresses reservations regarding the duty ofmemory, when it is excessively expanded beyond the sphere that we just addressed: thesereservations arise from the difficulties in controlling memory, and from the danger ofimplementing a politics of memory that is inscribed in terms of obligations, rights and8See Nicole Loraux, La cit divis (Paris: Payot, 1997), 256 and 277, and idem, La voix en deuil(Paris: Gallimard, 1999).96