Response Paper 7

In Preparation of Session 8
Denis Telofy Drescher
June 2, 2014
estion 1
How would you relate these theories to e Echo Maker? Choose either
Mead or Ricur.
Its fascinating how I hear about Derek Part one Wednesday and suddenly start
noticing him in all sorts of places, not just our obviously causally related literature but
also, for example, on hp://lesswrong.com/. He seems like someone I should denitely
add to my to-read list.
Not yet having read anything more than his Wikipedia article, however, I cant ap-
praise how important Ricurs criticism is. He points out a non sequitur in a thought
experiment, but the signicance may be limited if the thought experiment was merely
illustrative or if Part was talking about the idem to begin with. at would not be
obvious, since Part is not likely to use Ricurs models or his terminology for de-
scribing these aspects of identity.
ere seems to be a bit of a similarity here, though, between Ricurs idem and
ipse, and Meads I and me. Ricur again puts his denitions in rather dierent
terms, so Im not sure how far these similarities go. However, some of our discussions
of the I and me in relation to the e Echo Maker may apply similarly.
e Echo Maker seems to provide fertile ground for the illustration of any of these
theories, but Ill focus on Ricur. Most strikingly, Mark seems to acknowledge the
sameness of Karin (and his dog and his house etc.) but not her ipseity, and then
retroactively constructs dierences for her idem by painting a more rosy picture of
the Karin he remembers and over-interpreting dierences resulting from actual char-
acter developments. Confronted with a Karin idem with unknown ipse who ap-
pears so very suddenly, he constructs many new hypothetical narratives for her that
try to lend continuity to her identity (e.g., as actress and agent). He realizes intuitively
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that Without both sorts of identity there is no self, as Dauenhauer and Pellauer (3.2)
summarize.
Huskey, however, epitomizes one of Ricurs arguments against Parts position
as the idea of gaining oneself by losing onesel (Huskey 121), which he (Ricur)
criticizes on the grounds that then the question of others [would] also cease to maer.
is position, however, is very reminiscent of Lurias To nd the soul it is necessary
to lose it, which Powers placed right on the verso to the rst page.
In his interview with e Believer, Powers interprets it as To read anothers story,
you have to lose yours (e Believer), but when Luria wrote the sentence, he was
specically talking about looking toward social phenomena to understand personal
ones (Peacock and Lustig 140), so more of a vertical form of losing as opposed to
Powerss horizontal interpretation. Nonetheless, Daniels character and Karins char-
acter development both limn some form of vertical losing of an identity to regain a
more encompassing and rewarding one. Webers character development seems to me
less clearly denable within this framework and possibly closer to Powerss horizontal
idea.
If we assume for a moment that e Echo Maker itself is the honest, empathetic
account of Marks disease that Weber wanted to write, then it is also, to the degree
that he succeeded, a narrative that continuously connects the two versions of himself
(and other characters) that seem so dierent to him, showing the interactions that
forged the second from the rst. us it illustrates the meaning of narrative to (some
of) the four senses of idem that Ricur identies.
estion 2
What were your problems with the text? What passages, ideas or concepts
did you nd unclear, unconvincing or otherwise problematic?
My problem with reading Ricur was not so much in the text as in what was not
in the text. I read that he was invested not only in philosophy but also in Christian
theology, so I intuitively read his argument with the same distance with which I read
Descartes. Surprisingly, however, I found nothing in the text that was susceptible to
this distancing. As a result, I read every new paragraph with the growing suspicion
that he was either successfully fooling me or that I was overly paranoid.
e Echo Maker was fascinating enough that some minor disappointments did not
tip the scales toward an overall disappointment. e lile mystery plot line did have
somewhat of a twist ending, but I had been looking forward to a more encompassing
Blame Wallace.
Sorry for the long citation chain.
Im not sure I understand the dierence between senses three and four.
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twist with eects on all plot lines. When Daniel and Barbara where rst introduced, for
example, I hoped for some twist ending where Daniel would be Karins Mr. urman,
a person she could lean on and conde in when there was no one le for her to lean
on and conde in, and where Barbara would be the new Karin, a new persona she cre-
ates for herself according to Marks needs and idealized memories of her when Mark
discards the original her, who she wasnt all that proud of anyway. Ive sometimes
changed only when my environment changed, not so much because the new envi-
ronment required it, but because the expectations of old environment had creased to
constrain me. Away fromher job in a town where she has fewacquaintances who could
recognize her, Karin might have found an environment conductive to such a transfor-
mation, and since the novel also works with the theme of identity as it emerges from
characters interactions with their environments, I had almost expected it.
estion 3
What did you nd interesting about the text? What aspects of the text
would you like to know more about?
I wonder whether Powers primarily draws on his themes to write novels or whether
he writes novels to convey his themes. If its the laer, then I want to give him a hug.
Works Cited
Dauenhauer, Bernard and David Pellauer. Paul Ricoeur. e Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. Summer 2014. 2014. http: / / plato. stanford. edu/
archives/sum2014/entries/ricoeur/.
Huskey, R.K. Paul Ricoeur on Hope: Expecting the Good. Peter Lang, 2009. Print. Phe-
nomenology & literature.
Peacock, J. and T. Lustig. Diseases and Disorders in Contemporary Fiction: e Syndrome
Syndrome. Taylor & Francis, 2013. Print. Routledge Studies in Contemporary Liter-
ature.
e Believer. Richard Powers: e Brain is the Ultimate Storytelling Machine, and
Consciousness is the Ultimate Story. (2007). Print.
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