Writing History, Writing Trauma - Rilegato

Lacapra, Dominick

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 080186495X ISBN 13: 9780801864957

Casa editrice: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr, 2000

Riassunto

Trauma and its often symptomatic aftermath pose acute problems for historical representation and understanding. In this study, Dominick LaCapra offers a broad-ranging, critical enquiry into the problem of trauma, notably with respect to major historical events. In a series of interlocking essays, he explores theoretical and literary-critical attempts to come to terms with trauma as well as the crucial role that post-traumatic testimonies - particularly Holocaust testimonies - have assumed in recent thought and writing. In doing so, he adopts psychoanalytic concepts to historical analysis and employs sociocultural and political critique to elucidate trauma and its after-effects in culture and in people. In the first chapter LeCapra addresses trauma from the perspective of history as a discipline. He then lays a theoretical groundwork for the book as a whole, exploring the concept of historical specificity and insisting on the difference between transhistorical and historical trauma. Subsequent chapters consider how Holocaust testimonies raise the problem of the role of affect and empathy in historical understanding, and respond to the debates surrounding Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust". The book's concluding essay, "Writing (About) Trauma", examines the various ways that the voice of trauma emerges in written and oral accounts of historical events.

Su questo libro

Recensione

"One could not wish for a more judicious, lucid, and compassionate guide through the complexities of post-traumatic writing than LaCapra. No one has done more to sustain the vitality and humanity of critical thinking in the face of those historical events -- above all the Shoah -- which seem to defy comprehension. These essays will frame the debates on the 'writing of trauma' for years to come. LaCapra lays out, with the care, precision, and compassion we have come to expect from him, the terms and distinctions by which we can begin to think through the complexities of post-traumatic writing. These essays provide absolutely crucial points of orientation in the haunted spaces of post-Holocaust culture, thought, and representation." -- Eric Santner, University of Chicago

Recensione

"This is a comprehensive, informed and generously footnoted contribution to trauma studies... Writing History, Writing Trauma will thus important reading not only to trauma theorists and their critics, but to historians and literary critics of all persuasions invested in rethinking the relationship between trauma, history, and ethics." -- Debarati Sanyal, SubStance

"Intellectually complex yet lucid." -- Erik Weisengruber, Literary Research

"[T]houghtful and compelling... LaCapra's discussions of historiography, philosophy, and psychoanalysis are extraordinarily lucid, and this book is a brilliant example of some of the capabilities of contemporary trauma theory in analyzing representations of trauma." -- Tikkun

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2000
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 080186495X
• ISBN 13: 9780801864957
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 226
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile