The hermeneutics of faith and the hermeneutics of suspicion

Ricoeur distinguishes between two forms of hermeneutics: a hermeneutics of faith which aims to restore meaning to a text and a hermeneutics of suspicion which attempts to decode meanings that are disguised. In this paper, his distinction is applied to interpretive stances in narrative research. From the point of view of a hermeneutics of faith, the interpretive effort is to examine the various messages inherent in an interview text, giving "voice" in various ways to the participant(s), while the researcher working from the vantage point of the hermeneutics of suspicion problematizes the participants' narrative and "decodes" meaning beyond the text. Examples are offered of narrative research from each point of view and the implications of working from each stance are explored. Each interpretive position also effects both reflexivity and ethics, and these matters are also discussed. Finally, the implications and possiblities of combining these interpretive positions are considered.