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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, inuencing the choice about which theories are appropriate in library and information science (LIS). A third tradition, known as process philosophy, gives prominence to human knowledge as an organically integrated, self-sustaining whole, thereby opening another avenue for the effort to revitalize theory in LIS. Drawing on process philosophy, this article argues that library is another level in the process of semantic innovation that includes symbol, word, sentence, and narrative. Because semantic innovation relies on imagining and reading as mediators and is central to the achievement of narrative identity, this philosophy opens a fresh perspective on the library in the life of a person.

Of the ve grand challenges that Michael Buckland sets for library research [1], possibly the most challenging will be the effort needed to revitalize library theory [2]. In a major contribution to this emerging conversation, John Budd gives a philosophical framework for knowledge and knowing in library and information science (LIS); he advocates phenomenological hermeneutics for theory development in LIS [3]. However, in the kind of analysis that he undertakes to arrive at this preferred stance, one of the quieter voices in philosophy tends to be overlooked. Process philosophy, which is a position whose insights show ample promise of increasing philosophical utility [4, p. 3], is worthy of consideration if we are looking for new 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 Information Technology, RMIT University, Level 17, 239 Bourke Street, Melbourne 3000, Victoria, Australia. E-mail bonna.jones@rmit.edu.au. [Library Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 2, pp. 101121] 2005 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0024-2519/2005/7502-0001$10.00

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process philosophy is situated as a living tradition among other philosophies and why some recent developments in this tradition have relevance in LIS. As discussed below, the main traditions of thought that emerged at the time of Rene Descartes fall into two camps. One gives prominence to reality as 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 split has long been a feature of our ideas, there are thinkers who posit that an entirely different approach is not only possible but also sorely needed at this time. Advancing the view that nature is processual, process philosophers argue that objective and subjective are integral aspects of a universe that is creative and therefore must be treated as such. Human consciousness in this view is both an achievement of and a contributor to these dynamics that have the capacity to generate new kinds of beings that are more than the conditions of their emergence [5, p. 1]. In LIS, an example can be seen in the activity of reading. Being a vital operation that is transformative, reading is worthy of support in its own right, but the substantive nature 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 a reader brings to the action of reading and the fact that readers themselves can be so transformed that reading the same work again can be a new experience. Without a doubt these are theoretically challenging dynamics, as work in various disciplines show, but Budds explanation indicates only their presence [3]; it is arguable that the framework he proposes does not engage directly with these process/product dynamics or with levels of activity. In my view, these warrant more attention than he manages to achieve in his framework.

Process Thought as a Living Tradition As described by Nicholas Rescher, a process metaphysics regards the domain of human knowledge as an organically integrated, self-sustaining whole [4]. Rather than oppose scientic knowledge, process metaphysics seeks to accommodate it, but it does so by positing that physical existence is processual and that processes are the central phenomena that we encounter in the natural world of which we are part. As described by Arran Gare, process philosophy is best understood as a tradition of thought that is advocated by philosophers, scientists, and systems theorists who exalt life and, therefore, set themselves in opposition to mechanistic thinking and the social order based upon it [5]. In this antireductionist theory, both the natural and human world are seen as consisting of processes, with

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objects having a derivative status [7, p. 5]. A fundamental challenge in such a view is to work out what is involved when we construe the world as a world of processes and then to reformulate both the natural and human sciences on this basis [7]. In the West, process philosophy is usually traced back to Heraclitas in antiquity, 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 identiable with this tradition [4]. Gare now argues that recognition of Friedrich Schelling (17551854) as a process philosopher will enable us to further this tradition and 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 that of Alfred North Whitehead. According to Schelling [9], a process is denable as productivity that consists in opposed activities limiting each other, and he also highlights the importance of levels of activity, an emphasis that we can see pursued today, for example, in hierarchy theory [10]. That is, a hierarchy of activity is given prominence rather than a static hierarchy consisting of things, as products already achieved. Following this line of thought, we can appreciate how processes inuence each other to form those conditions in which new possibilities emerge. It is this emphasis on emergence, found in process thinking but neglected in other traditions of philosophy, that is a major attraction of this philosophy. While an interest in process philosophy has been sustained over hundreds 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 emergence [5] and achieves in this synthesis a coherence to the history of philosophy that is lacking in other accounts, such as Budds [3]. Through a schematic of what is possible [5] and a more extensive account [11], Gare centers on the importance of action and theories of action, thus opening the opportunity to rethink the main debate of our era: that postmodernism has arisen in response to the inadequate account that modernism gives, not only of reality but also of its own activity and purpose. As with many writers, including Budd [3], a central concern for Gare is the crucial dualism that is created and sustained from the ideas advanced by Descartes [5]. Arguing that the most important challenge facing presentday philosophy is to make the emergence of consciousness intelligible, Gare gives his account of this dualism as follows: While Descartes successfully inaugurated a new era in which mathematical physics became the paradigm and foundation for all other knowledge, by problematizing consciousness he also generated a counter-tradition of thought centred on the assumption of the primary reality of consciousness [5, p. 4]. Since this split, large numbers of philosophers and scientists have taken the

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material world, as conceived by Descartes and reformulated by Sir Isaac Newton, as their point of departure. Their project aims to explain everything, including society and human consciousness, from a standpoint of mathematical physics. This is the tradition characterized by Whitehead as scientic materialism [12]. Even today, the majority of scientists continue to 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 reference point; their aim is to explain the realm of nature as a mental, cultural, or spiritual construct. They do not accept the ontological implications of the scientic view of the world at face value, and they are usually dismissed by their 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 of the pragmatists, phenomenologists, and ordinary language philosophers [5]. Being a much less coherent tradition of thought than scientic materialism, this tradition tends to divide itself; on the one hand, there are those who assume that consciousness is individual or transcendental and those who argue that it is essentially social, cultural, or spiritual. On the other hand, there are those who assume that consciousness is contemplative, as well as those who insist that praxis precedes reective or theoretical thinking. But, according to Gare, what all such thinkers have in common is a refusal to be bound by the categories of reductionist science and a determination to do justice to the creativity and freedom of consciousness [5, p. 4]. Arriving at this synthesis and then going beyond it, Gare shows how process philosophy both acknowledges the achievements made by the socalled idealists, including the difculties in their project, and yet still manages to give prominence to nature or the physical world, rather than to consciousness, as the primary reference point for making the world intelligible [5]. Having made this move, process thinkers can then allow for the emergence of consciousness: Much bolder than the idealists, these are the philosophers and scientists who have argued that whatever its achievements, the mainstream tradition of science must be fundamentally wrong, that nature must be such that consciousness, fully appreciated as such, can be conceived as part of nature. This requires that at least some of the central characteristics of consciousness must be central characteristics of all that exists, including non-living physical entities. Accordingly, they have called for a transformation or revolution in science on the basis of a new conception of nature from which consciousness could evolve [5, p. 5]. While Gare acknowledges that there are complexities and anomalies not adequately accounted for by this brief characterization of modern thought,

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nevertheless he contends that the history of modern philosophy and science becomes properly intelligible only when construed in this way [5]. He argues that this sketch of a revisionist history of philosophy could be the basis of a more coherent history than we have seen to date. So, building on the kind of account that we also see in Budd [3], Gare goes considerably further [5]; he contextualizes certain philosophical traditions from the viewpoint of todays world and the conditions we now face, wherein a whole of knowledge approach is not only called for but also viable; he retrieves from current thinking a position that offers possibilities; and he suggests that we review the work of certain thinkers, such as Schelling, given these moves. Whereas Budd concludes that the categories central to LIS theory should be essence, being, interpretation, perception, self and other, and intentionality [3], Gare offers us a broader theory [11]. Calling for development of more adequate categories to dene the nature of the cosmos, he argues that matter, space, time, and motion should be replaced by activity; order and potentiality; process, structure, and event; cause; and spatiotemporal position. From Gare we have a sense of the organically integrated, self-sustaining whole that is human knowledge in motion, and beyond this we have nature as the force that shapes human endeavor [11]. The importance of Gares contribution can be further appreciated if we attend to Alasdair MacIntyre, who offers a context in which these ideas can be evaluated [13]. MacIntyre contends that one can make a contribution to a tradition only if one uses narrative as ones form; that is, one must tell a story, and it has to be adequate if one is to defend ones position in an ongoing debate or conversation. In other words, in a tradition of ideas, the opposed activities [9] are positions made in an ongoing argument or conversation; a narrative is then an achievement or product of a process of synthesis [14] that is open to the forces operating in the argument [15]. MacIntyre cites a good example of this when he shows that Galileos contribution to the development of science is superior because it enables the work of all his predecessors to be evaluated by a common set of standards [13, p. 460]. That is, because of Galileo, the history of late medieval science can nally be cast into a coherent narrative. In the scientic tradition, the narrative of science is rewritten in such a way that previous narratives that shaped the tradition are accounted for. Furthermore, from these ideas tradition can be construed as a process of narrative transition. Described in terms of a denition given by Raymond Williams, tradition is the process of handing down [16]; we can say that the narratives have similarity to their predecessors but are also changed in the process of handing down because they are reauthored or regured. Taking Gares contribution as correct [5, 11] and process philosophy as the 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

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need of revision than Budds [3] account achieves. More important, we can see from the above that we already have sufcient ideas to ask what these developments open up for LIS. According to Gares main argument, we must account for that which we have not yet been able to address, which is the emergence of consciousness [5]. This is a large philosophical question, of the order of the big questions that have shaped civilization, and thereby calls for the correspondingly large conversation we see played out in philosophy. Beginning on a smaller scale with the contribution of Budd [3] and taking this larger conversation as the context, I shall offer below an example of the possibilities that could emerge from these ideas.

Choosing a Viable Path Forward Through his emphasis on essence, being, interpretation, perception, self and other, and intentionality, Budd [3] seems to situate his work within the tradition that takes consciousness as the primary reality. We see, for example, that he offers the following: The framework that will be articulated . . . is admittedly somewhat eliminativist; it does, through evaluation, turn us from paths (such as deterministic scientism) that lead nowhere. That said, the framework not only allows, but necessitates, examination of the essential elements of our work [3, p. 247]. Assuming my interpretation is correct and remembering that the clarity of his ideas may very well be compromised given that the tradition he espouses is a less coherent one than the deterministic scientism he rejects, we could nevertheless conclude that he gives prominence to elements and not to process. In other words, there is little emphasis on the interpretive process whereby new meaning is created; the dynamics are neglected despite his contention that part of the goal for librarianship is the organization of information to enhance meaning [3, p. 1]. Paul Ricoeur has done considerable work to advance our understanding of the process of interpretation, which he regards as being a contributor to a process of semantic innovation, but Budds treatment of this philosopher fails to make the most of this: Ricoeur acknowledges the complexity of 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 most instances 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 structural analysis, for this presupposition, identied with the mathematical physics approach considered above, reduces our options for action. How-

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ever, this is not all that Ricoeur [14] has to say. Yes, we must critique his work, but if we limit ourselves to this operation, we miss the possibilities that open up and, hence, are poorer. Words are part of sentences, but much more can be said about this in relation to the process of making meaning. Similarly, sentences are parts of narratives, but, again, more can be said about this. These are levels in a hierarchy of action, which is the process of semantic innovation. Arguably, library also belongs in this process as an achievement of and contributor to this hierarchy. In other words, if we take a process thinking approach to the work of Ricoeur 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 ideas open up for LIS and which other thinkers have similar ideas that can be integrated to generate more coherent theory.

Semantic Innovation The Contribution of Interpretation Ricoeur [17] begins with symbolism, having already shown that symbolisms nd their expression within language. He denes a symbol as any structure of signicance in which a direct, primary, literal meaning designates, in addition, another meaning which is indirect, secondary, and gurative and which can be apprehended only through the rst [18, p. 98], and he denes interpretation as the work of thought which consists in deciphering 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 to speak to us [19, p. 27]. At this level of a hermeneutics of interpretation, Ricoeur argues that symbol and interpretation become correlative concepts; there is interpretation wherever there is multiple meaning, and it is in interpretation that the plurality of meanings is manifested [18]. In other words, at the level of symbol there is a gap, a distance between the symbol itself and what the symbol stands for. It is at this level that interpretation is the movement between them; we can say that as soon as there is distance, there is relationship and the possibility for this relationship to be productive. The dynamic that is interpretation incorporates the nonmethodical moment of understanding and the methodical moment of explanation [18, 20, 21]. Understanding . . . precedes, accompanies, concludes, and thus envelops explanation. Explanation, in turn, develops understanding analytically [20, p. 142]. As there is a dialectical relationship, interpretation cannot be reduced to either side of the dialectic; and yet, these cannot

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stand alone. Just as language, by being actualized in discourse, surpasses itself as system and realizes itself as event, so too discourse, by entering the process of understanding, surpasses itself as event and becomes meaning [20, p. 78]. Hence, it is via the action of interpretation that new meaning is achieved or created in the context of existing meanings, but these existing meanings are neither unstructured nor without differentiation, nor are they static. As agents, we belong to language at the level of world, but we do not act in isolation, as the dynamics at this level have their own life in terms of language; there is both a horizon and a background for the everyday interpretation. The Contribution of Narrative Working from the above, it is clear that meaning is created at the level of a word; that is, an interpretation nds expression as a form of language, one level of which is the word. At the level of a sentence, more meaning is created, for a sentence is more than just an aggregate of words. At the level of two or more sentences, brought together, the beginnings of a narrative emerge, and again we have new meaning created. That is, a narrative is more meaningful than an aggregation of the meanings in individual sentences. Dened in process terms, narrative operates as an action of synthesis or a grasping together of the heterogeneous within language: With narrative, the semantic innovation lies in the inventing of another work of synthesisa plot. By means of the plot, goals, causes, and chance are brought together within the temporal unity of a whole and complete action [14, p. ix]. In other words, narrative involves semantic innovation; a process of innovation or creativity is present because a newly invented narrative relies on emplotment to create new understanding. In order to create his narrative theory, Ricoeur [14, 21, 22] begins with mimesis, which is generally dened as the process of imitating or representing something; then he extends this meaning to include the active invention of something new. Rather than render mimesis as mere imitation, there is a sense in which the audience is living inside the experience; mimesis is a series of operations whereby what is produced in the action is an organization of events by an emplotment that is not a copy or identical replica but a new emplotment of events. The three stages of mimesis include the familiar preunderstanding we have of the order of action, followed by entry into the realm of composition, and nally the achievement of a new conguration that regures the preunderstood order of action and contours the eld of action such that the process is a spiral linking back into itself. The dynamic nature of the emplotment process is given a central place

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in Ricoeurs theory, and he emphasizes that it should not be confused with the actual structure of a narrative [14]. Emplotment enables individual agents to interpret and understand events that happen in the world of action. Using the analogy of reader and text (wherein the latter is very broadly dened as an objectication or product of action), Ricoeur argues that human experiences, grounded in the world of action, take on the nature of prenarratives [14]. These prenarratives are in a state of preguration, and their articulation becomes the narration of an experience, which he calls conguration. Once narrated, the possibility exists for reguration, or reauthoring. In terms of relationship, these are the three moments in the 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 a process). Ricoeur argues that conguration and reguration have a faculty of mediation enabling a work to lift . . . itself above the opaque depths of living, acting, and suffering, to be given by an author to readers who receive it and thereby change their acting [14, p. 53]. Because it is the reader who takes up the unity of the traversal from preguration (mimesis1) to reguration (mimesis3) by way of conguration (mimesis2), this being done by way of reading [14], and because Ricoeur argues that narrative is central to human endeavors to make sense of the world, these would seem to be important operations for LIS to consider in theoretical terms. Expanding on the above, we would say that experience is rst apprehended in pregured form; it comes as narratives in the making [14, pp. 5758]. This is because life itself has a prenarrative character and human experience is not a series of disconnected events but rather has some 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 eld. This cultural setting or practical eld is a shared reality, one that has order and structure, which takes form as language, convention, and norm. To some extent, experience is also present as the little stories of everyday life [23]; rather than being prenarrative in character, there is already narrative form [24]. But another contributor to our theoretical understanding of this level of action shows that individual and social actions are indeed lived narratives. Carr shows how narrative is a form that inheres in action even before the advent of the storyteller to tell the story [24]. The congurational act is one of composition or grasping together. It is an act that extracts a conguration from that which is otherwise a succession of events [14]. In the series of operations, conguration is the turning point or crucial pivot; it is the mediation between preguration

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and the rest of the process. What is at stake . . . is the concrete process by which the textual conguration mediates between the preguration of the practical eld and the reguration 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 conguration opens up the experience, which itself has come in prenarrative form, 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 calls the complexities of concordant discordance. It draws from this manifold of events the unity of one temporal whole [14, p. 66]. Furthermore, in the operation of conguration there is the expectation that the process of emplotment will have an end point, a conclusion to the process from which it can be perceived, even momentarily, as forming a whole. The conclusion 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 act of conguration is the work of the productive imagination [14]. In terms of the process, conguration gives way to the next operation, which is reguration, or mimesis3. Reguration, or reauthoring, marks the intersection of the world of the text and the world of the hearer or reader [14, p. 71]. It is the intersection of the world as congured by the text and the world of action, or it can be understood as the return to the world of action by the individual agent or reader. Narrative has its full meaning when it is restored to the time of action and of suffering in mimesis3 [14, p. 70]. Entry into a practical eld in this sense involves entry into a eld of references that themselves are part of the process. (Note that suffering is dened as the counterpart to the action of another; hence, the meaning is broader than that found in everyday language.) An example of reguration is the capacity to make a narrative or invent a new plot from the same events but to lead to different actions; for example, a person who reads a book may subsequently regure important events in her life to achieve a new synthesis involving connections not made before. Ricoeur emphasizes that the spiral of narrative making is endless because we are able to carry the mediation past the same point a number of times, but at different altitudes [14, p. 72]. Hence, reauthoring involves taking an active part in the authorship of our own lives. The Contribution of Library In detailing this process of semantic innovation, I have a purpose, which is 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 library is also a level in this hierarchy of action. Making libraries describes what

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we do as our contribution to this process of making meaning. Libraries are achievements of but also contributors to the process of semantic innovation. Given the above, the process of semantic innovation belongs to the emergence of consciousness, which we have already seen is not currently explicable without a major shift occurring in philosophy [5]. Because of this, a consideration of consciousness opens up many questions about how to proceed. For example, just what we mean by consciousness is notoriously hard to dene, partly because of the split described above [5]. Even an authoritative companion to philosophy, which we could reasonably expect to help with this, says at the beginning of its entry on consciousness, it resists denition [25]. However, if we take a process thinking approach, construing objective and subjective as being aspects of a universe that is creative, and we apply this to LIS, a possible departure point is deciding which level of activity to address [10]. For example, we could elaborate on our contribution to the process of semantic innovation in theoretical terms; we could consider the contribution of libraries to scholarship, to nation-states, or to individual lives, as these are part of a fabric of cultural institutions. As a number of possibilities do open up with these ideas, the focus in the remainder of this article will be on this level of an individual life; that is, 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 to the ideas of Ricoeur and to gain a fresh perspective on the call for advances in LIS theory.

Library in the Life of a Person With regard to individual lives and libraries in the life of persons, Wiegand points to the failure of information science to construct models of a personal information economy for individuals, ones that analyze how individuals appropriate information in efforts to make sense of the world around them in their everyday lives [2, p. 24]. He argues that, relative to other disciplines, researchers in LIS have not beneted from the critical thinking that has been available; he cites, for example, work done on the relationship of power to knowledge. Invoking Douglas Zweizig, he calls for 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 imaginations to date. Furthermore, he concludes that the arena of study we call information science continues to be dened by the technology that is characteristic of the eld as we know it today. He argues that, built on expertise rather than authority, this discourse, with its focus on technology, renders

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people and their culture invisible; those not using the technologies at the heart of information science are being ignored [3]. Compare these comments with those of Gare, and immediately there are resonances: Individuals who utilize the inherent reexivity of the narrative form to question the stories they have been socialized into, to consider alternative versions of these stories, to regure their lives in accordance with their chosen versions of the stories of which they are a part, who thereby take responsibility for their lives, are the creative agents of culture, society and history. Such people are the authentic authors of their own becoming [26, p. 7]. But narrative is prominent in this quote, not information. Even more important, it is narrative as action, rather than narrative as object, that is given center stage. One of Gares overarching arguments is that philosophy has a contribution to make to our potential to address the global ecological crisis [5]; he argues that a process metaphysics can and indeed must mount a challenge to scientic materialism. In making this argument, he gives an important role to narratives, suggesting that we take into account the work of MacIntyre, whose book After Virtue provides a useful starting point [27]. Not only does it tell the story of the dire straits in which philosophy now nds itself in Anglophone countries; it also shows the importance of narratives and of a healthy narrative-making process. On this basis, Gare suggests 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 discourse have to be understood in terms of where we are up to in the project of creating the best philosophical account so farthat is, a unied, integrated, and rational account. According to Gare [5, 11], the account should also be systematic, but there are few philosophical candidates adequate to the task. It is now necessary to treat the divide considered above as a productive space and not as a distance that forever identies two camps. In order to choose between different philosophies, we must be able to inhabit and understand rival, historically developing traditions of thought from the inside [11]. But we must also put these into perspective and see them in relation to each other; this is where narrative theory comes to the fore. MacIntyre shows how narratives constitute social life: I can only answer the question What am I to do? if I can answer the prior question Of what story or stories do I nd myself a part? We enter human society, that is, with one or more imputed charactersroles into which we have been drafted [13, p. 216]. While there continues to be argument over the claim that stories are lived before they are recounted and that life is stories being lived out, the work of Carr shows that this is so, for the overall temporal structure of action is narrative in character; life is an inchoate narrative

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[24]. Human reality is not just a sequence because it can be demonstrated that narrative coherence inheres in even the most elementary experience or action [24, p. 88]. Narrative coherence is an essential structural feature of 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 imposed on 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 which transforms events into a story by telling them [24, p. 59]. This emphasis on activity is also found in MacIntyre: Narrative is not the work of poets, dramatists and novelists reecting upon events which had no narrative order before one was imposed by the singer or the writer; narrative form is neither disguise nor decoration [13, p. 211]. For MacIntyre, human actions are themselves enacted narratives; for Carr, it is in living out a life that we achieve a grasp at the level of attempting to make meaning or sense of relationships [24]. According to Gare, following this line of thought shows us the following:
Actions are lived stories. The more complex the action, the longer its duration and the more people involved, the more obviously this is the case. Actions such as building a community or developing our understanding of the cosmos can transcend generations, and Carr showed the central importance of narratives to such actions. Institutions are largely made up of patterns of symbolically organized actions crystallized and sustained as part of such long-term complex actions. . . . Just as individual actions consist of a hierarchy of smaller, component actions while being components of broader actions, stories are made up of smaller, component stories while being parts of broader stories. People are born into social worlds already constituted by stories, including stories of institutions, and must take a place within these, but in taking up a place, they are put in a position where they can question and transform these stories, including the ultimate goals they project. That is, through stories people are recognized as subjects and are thereby subjected by the logic of these stories, but at the same time they can be empowered to entertain or imagine alternative narrative emplotments with alternative visions of the future and alternative ways of living, to congure the stories of their own lives and to participate in reguring, thereby becoming the co-authors of, these broader stories. . . . The stories of particular people are lived out in a world of unfolding stories of different durations, ultimately extending to the stories of nations, civilization and of humanity over centuries. [28, pp. 1415]

If it is through stories that we gain a grasp of how to act, the question then 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 embedded into a matrix of stories that includes those of family, profession, organizations, and nation-states. How do these institutions contribute to this orientation to a good life? The narrative unity achieved in an individual identity is dened to some degree by the narratively constituted traditions

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of institutions and communities. And it is here that Gare extends MacIntyres argument to clarify the relationship of philosophical discourse and everyday philosophical questions, for the big questions that confront us in our own projects are addressed through these narratives that are constitutive of the traditions. A living tradition . . . is an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition [27, p. 222). Similarly, Ricoeur argues that our heritage is not a sealed package we pass from hand to hand, without ever opening, but rather a treasure from which we draw by the handful, and which by this very act is replenished. Every tradition lives by 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 elaborated above, an interpretation is achieved and offered in the argument. But, as shown by MacIntyre, one cannot make or defend a position in an argument unless one uses narrative [13]; in effect, one tells a story to account for ones position. And beyond this, there is the reauthoring or reguring of those narratives that constitute institutions. When Budd argues that complex action . . . does not spring from intuition or tacit reliance on reaction to stimuli, but on . . . thinking and knowledge [3, p. 1], we will nd ourselves in agreement if we also agree with Gare, as shown above, but we will be concerned that Budd fails to adequately account for this complex action. To address this, narrative theory, as expounded by MacIntyre, Carr, and Ricoeur, could be integrated into 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 the level of action that Wiegand [2] points to, that of person, thereby elaborating 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 of the two camps described by Gare [5]; rather, he seeks to overcome the difculties presented by these traditions. He construes self as a project, which nevertheless can result at any point in a material outcome; for example, 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 into the culture in which we live. These detours have the spiral form we see explained above; that is, there is no meaning without a return to the practical eld, which, in this instance, is our own life. These ideas warrant a closer look.

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In considering action and its counterpart, suffering or being acted upon, Ricoeur contends that there is a problem of identity that is central to questions in the narrative process that involve who; such questions include who acted? who intervened? what was done to whom? and on whose behalf was the action taken? These questions pertain to self or selfhood, and Ricoeur addresses the problems they raise by extending narrative theory to account for identity [14, 22, 29, 30]. The key who question is who am I? and it is appropriate to say that this is dialectical; we cannot contribute to processes unless we make an account of ourselves, unless we can say Its me here. And the double allegiance 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 central character in that account. As explored above, the action of composition is central to the narrative process, which is an integrating process. By integrating process I mean the work of composition which gives a dynamic identity to the story recounted: what is recounted is a particular story, one and complete in itself [31, p. 21]. Furthermore, Ricoeur is not alone in thinking 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 into existence. Ricoeur suggests that, for a person, there are a series of dialectics at work in this process of identity narration [29]. First, there is explanation and understanding operating in dialectic; a process of interpretation involves a threefold movement of interpretation, understanding, and explanation. In other words, as we saw above, a person interprets a symbol, understands it, and then explains its meaning; Ricoeur argues that this happens regardless of whether we privilege one or the other of two kinds of eventsinterpretations or factsbecause both are present and part of one set of operations. Second, Ricoeur attends to the importance of the dialectic between self and other, which he suggests is multiple in the sense that it is characterized by experience of ones own body, the self of reciprocity or dialogue with other people, and the dialogue with what can be thought of as the other within. The last, he argues, is experienced as conscience. Third, there is the dialectic of identity, which is shaped by narrative in time. Each of these contribute to a dynamic relationship between sameness and selfhood, by which he means that we can be identied in time as the same person, but we also change over time as we develop selfhood. For Ricoeur, reading is the mediator between the pole of phenomenology, on the one hand, and that of semantic structure, on the other hand [14]. He argues that the latter can be described in relation to au-

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thorial strategies, the semiautonomous nature of the text, and a theory of the readers response to the author and text. We saw above how Ricoeur argues that meaning is an achievement of the interpretive process; he also argues that a text is an achievement of the narrative operations described above [14]. In describing a text as an achievement, certain characteristics of the text become clearer, characteristics that are not so apparent when we are conned to a narrow denition that 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 the mode of its use. Rather than treat a text entirely as an object, Ricoeur emphasizes that what is present is a dialectic of objectication and understanding that is rst understood at the level of the text. It is at this level of text that we are able to speak of a unit of meaning as having a semiautonomous existence. A text is to some extent detached from the conditions of its production, but it is not completely autonomous. Rather, it is mediation in three dimensions: between man and world, between man and man, and between man and himself. According to Ricoeur, the rst mediation is referentiality, the second is communicability, and the third is self-understanding [31]. He shows how hermeneutics describes, as well as the interpretation of texts, the whole activity at the point of intersection of the (internal) conguration of the work and the (external) reguration of life [18]. The reader of the text is absent when the author is writing, but we can also speak of the absence of the writer at the event of reading. Ricoeur argues that a text replaces dialogue that would otherwise connect the voice of one to the hearing of another [21]. This semiautonomy is analogous to xation by writing to the extent that Ricoeur argues that we can use xation to encompass all comparable phenomena in the sphere of the transmission of discourse. As he shows, discourse is language as event or language as used, but discourse that is xed in a manner analogous to writing signals the presence of text. In this way, Ricoeur extends the concept of text to include all document-like objectications [38]. Fixation is more to do with autonomy of the text than it is to do with what constitutes the text. So, it is apparent that a text is a semiautonomous achievement of discursive operations and that it is available to be read in another place and time by an audience. For Ricoeur, this is the semantic autonomy of the 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 mediation of reading [14]. A text transcends its own production; specically, it transcends the psychological and sociological conditions of its own production. Ricoeur shows how this semantic autonomy is threefold in nature [21]. First, there is

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autonomy from the intentions of the author; in other words, what the text signies is no longer what the author intended. We could say that the author has limited control over the meaning that the reader appropriates. Second, a text becomes autonomous with respect to the cultural situation and 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 work itself 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 of readings. This openness to interpretation is what recontextualizes each reading in the series of readings, which is another reason why Ricoeur speaks of the text as having only semiautonomy. Great texts, such as those of Shakespeare, are open to recontextualization through new audiences and new reading encounters. The closure that is achieved in such texts is only temporary. Ricoeur argues that it is at the level of the text that we can best understand human objectication in the form of structural explanation and the hermeneutic understanding that is the counterpart of such explanation [42]. At this level, which is a hermeneutic of the text, the relationship of the world of the text and the world of the reader is of primary interest. The text does not contain a self-enclosed world in which we, as readers, go seeking 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-enclosed entity, rather it points to a possible world a world I could inhabit, where I 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-understanding, Ricoeur is able to argue that identity is a temporal structure that rests on narrative, as well as a project that is ongoing for individuals during their lifetime. Reading is central to this project because it is only in reading that the dynamism of conguration completes its course; in other words, the passage from preguration via conguration to reguration results in transguration of worlds. In this relationship of worlds, it is the person as reader who takes this journey [21]. His thesis is that the process of composition, of conguration, does not realize itself in the text but in the reader, and under this condition conguration makes possible reguration of a life by way of the narrative [44, p. 430]. As part of this, a person can be called upon to make an account of herself, and such an account, Ricoeur argues, involves a positing of a beginning, a middle with its highs and lows, and an ending [14]. Through composition, or conguration, this account

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is dynamic; we can weave different plots about our lives. Ricoeur reminds us that just as it is possible to compose several plots on the subject of the same incidents . . . so it is always possible to weave different, even opposed, plots about our lives [30, p. 248]. But, simultaneously, a life can have the quality of being singular and complete. In terms of a hermeneutics of selfunderstanding, Ricoeur best captures this when he argues that to understand oneself is to understand oneself as one confronts the text and to receive from it the conditions for a self other than that which rst undertakes the reading. Neither of the two subjectivities, neither that of the author nor that of the reader, is thus primary in the sense of an originary presence of the self to itself [44, p. 17]. For Ricoeur, it is through this task that we achieve, by dint of effort, a dynamic balancing of a sense of self, which is, on the one hand, unied and semiautonomous at the level of a social structure and, on the other, incoherent and seemingly located at the intersection of many different stories, some of which see us cast as a character in other peoples stories. Ricoeur argues that it is through this process that we become self, human and adult, by appropriating meanings that reside outside or have been objectied, in the works of culture, and through 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 thus becomes 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 in history and culture, that is, from within the circle of interpretation, which can be construed as a world of action with temporality in the form of traditions, and ongoing practices in the form of elds 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. In the terms used by Gare, we can appreciate how persons are processes of becoming that are emergent inside the cultural dynamics but that the latter also includes institutions that are themselves processes of becoming. Furthermore, if we appreciate that library is not just an aggregate of texts but is 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 conguration is the work of the productive imagination [14]. This imagination is not only rule governed; Ricoeur argues that it constitutes the generative matrix of rules [14, p. 68]. The imagination synthesizes in a narrative way that connects understanding and intuition

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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, where tradition is understood as an interplay of innovation and sedimentation; that is, there is a history of interpretation in conict with interpretation now [38]. Beyond this, Ricoeur argues that tradition in turn is referenced to paradigms encompassing form, genre, and type and that paradigms constitute the grammar that governs composition of new works [14, p. 69]. This narrative tradition enriches the labor of imagination in the operation of conguration. A library, when dened as a synthesis of narratives, both embodies and signies acts of imagination. Such acts can operate at different levels; for example, they are inherent to the levels of the hierarchy of 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 in the creation of worlds in front of the text. Given the above, new work could take these ideas much further in LIS and well beyond the framework that is currently offered [3]. But with regard to philosophy, we could give prominence to the process whereby the domain of human knowledge operates as an organically integrated, self-sustaining whole. We could do this because we value the health of the processes themselves, by which I mean semantic innovation at the levels of word, narrative, and library, whereby the operations of reading and imagining mediate in the constitution of individual lives. Arguably, no other profession has this brief. It could also be said that we already practice as if these narrative theories are true. Hence, our choice of philosophies should not be limited to the two main philosophies identied by Budd but rather could take up ideas from process thinking, which is a quieter but nevertheless relevant philosophy to which LIS should attend. By valuing the processes and articulating this with better abstractions more congruent with our action, we not only further our own project; we also sustain a vital engagement with the projects of individuals. We more clearly articulate the library in the life of the user, to use the words of Wiegand [2].

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4. Rescher, Nicholas. Process Metaphysics: An Introduction to Process Philosophy. New York: State University of New York Press, 1996. 5. Gare, Arran. Process Philosophy and the Emergent Theory of Mind: Whitehead, Lloyd Morgan 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 Poststructuralism. In Process and Difference: Between Cosmological and Poststructuralist Postmodernisms, edited by Catherine Keller and Anne Daniell, pp. 3154. New York: State University of New 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 Hierarchical Concept 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 of Science. Monist 60 (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 Anthology of His Work, edited by Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart, pp. 97108. Boston: Beacon, 1978. 19. Ricoeur, Paul. Structure and Hermeneutics. In his The Conict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, pp. 2761. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974. 20. Ricoeur, Paul. From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991. 21. Ricoeur, Paul. What Is a Text? In [22], pp. 10524. 22. Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Vol. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. 23. Ricoeur, Paul. Reply to Peter Kemp. In The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, edited by Lewis E. 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.

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