422 RüdigerKunow
whose principal authorities are, according to Ricoeur, Marx, Nietzsche,
and Freud, the "three masters of suspicion" (FreudandPhilosophy32-
35). The critical purchase of their otherwise rather heterogeneous work
derives from their shared attention to "the relation hidden-shown, or if
you prefer, simulated manifested" (Fr eud and Philosophy 33)—a
relation which can be said to play a crucial role also in personal and
professional responses to cancer as well as other illnesses or bodily
malfunctions.
WhileRicoeur'sargumentisdirectedmorenarrowlyatthetreatment
of evidence within Freudian psychology^118 (and has remained
controversial for exactly this reason), his distinction between two
different attitudes or modes of hermeneutic understanding can be
usefullyexpandedintoothercontexts,includingthatofthesemanticsof
cancer. Ruthellen Josselson's (herself a psychologist) rephrasing of the
Ricoeurianbinaryisquitehelpfulinthislattercontext:
Thefirstpositioningaimsatarestorationofameaningaddressedtothe
interpreter in the form ofa message. Itis characterized by a willingness
tolisten,toabsorbasmuchaspossiblethemessageinitsgivenform...
understoodasaculturalmechanismforourapprehensionofreality,asa
place of revelation. This type of hermeneutics is animated by faith. By
contrast, hermeneutics may be approached as thedemystification of
meaningpresentedtotheinterpreterintheformofdisguise.Thistypeof
hermeneutics is... animated by suspicion, by a skepticism towards the
given.(3)It is important to note that Josselson is here speaking of "cultural
mechanism[s]," and indeed, the concept of a hermeneutics of suspicion
has, as I indicated above, traveled from the fields of philosophy and
psychology into cultural critique. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick is an
unavoidable reference here. In her essay "Paranoid Reading and
Reparative Reading" (1997) and also in other writings, she takes issue
with what she sees as the privileging of disbeliefin contemporary
(^118) Ricoeursawthehermeneuticsofsuspicionandits"stratagemofdeciphering"
(Freud and Philosophy34) represented most forcefully in Freud's readings of
religion.