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Recent developments in literary theory and philosophy, specifically regarding the role of critique, that inspire the turn to post-critique and realism, respectively, indicate a renewed sensitivity for concerns characteristic of hermeneutic phenomenology. This essay argues that crucial aspects of Ricœur’s articulation of phenomenology and hermeneutics may help to understand and support post-critique and realism and that, in turn, the latter two invite hermeneutics to return to its phenomenological condition. To this end, Ricœur’s understanding of the hermeneutical condition of phenomenology, both in the form of Husserl’s idealist phenomenology and the phenomenology of religion, is revisited; Ricœur’s account of distantiation is critically assessed; and, finally, the interplay of trust and distrust at stake in hermeneutic phenomenology is contrasted with the modern insistence on hyperbolic doubt., Les développements récents en matière de théorie littéraire et de philosophie, notamment concernant le rôle de la critique, qui suscitent respectivement le tournant vers la post-critique et vers le réalisme, témoignent d’une sensibilité renouvelée pour des préoccupations relevant de la phénoménologie herméneutique. Cet essai soutient que certains aspects fondamentaux de l’articulation de la phénoménologie et de l’herméneutique chez Ricœur permettent de comprendre et de défendre la post-critique et le réalisme et que, en retour, ces deux derniers appellent l’herméneutique à revenir à sa condition phénoménologique. Pour ce faire, la compréhension ricœurienne de la condition herméneutique de la phénoménologie, sous la forme de la phénoménologie idéaliste de Husserl et de la phénoménologie de la religion, sera soumise à un réexamen ; les considérations de Ricœur sur la distanciation feront l’objet d'une analyse critique et, enfin, l’interaction de la confiance et de la suspicion qui est en jeu dans la phénoménologie herméneutique sera mise en contraste avec l’insistance moderne sur le doute hyperbolique.

In which sense can literature be conceived as an experiment? What type of experiment and experience does literature offer and what type or dimension of reality is at stake in literary investigations? What are the ontological stakes of literature in its construction of another world or a second nature? In this essay, I adress these questions in discussion with two authors who explicitly understand literature as experiment, namely Paul Ricoeur and Giorgio Agamben. To get a better sense of these ontological stakes of the experiment of literature, I will first turn to Ricoeur’s account . Subsequently, I will offer a critical discussion of how his concept of configuration, a central notion in his theory of narrative, actually limits the sense of the literary experiment and its ontological stakes. This discussion will address the relation between the concepts of potentiality, contingency, and event. Finally, I will turn to Agamben’s reading of Herman Melville’s famous story Bartleby, the Scrivener to offer a different sense of both the ontological stakes of the literary experiment and the relation between these three concepts.