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Unclaimed experience : trauma, narrative, and history / Cathy Caruth, Cornell University.

By: Publisher: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016Edition: Twentieth Anniversary editionDescription: x, 195 pages ; 22 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781421421650
  • 1421421658
Subject(s): Available additional physical forms:
  • Also issued online.
Contents:
Introduction: The Wound and the Voice1. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma and the Possibility of History (Freud, Moses and Monotheism)2. Literature and the Enactment of Memory (Duras, Resnais, Hiroshima mon amour)3. Traumatic Departures: Survival and History in Freud (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Moses and Monotheism) 4. The Falling Body and the Impact of Reference (de Man, Kant, Kleist) 5. Traumatic Awakenings (Freud, Lacan, and the Ethics of Memory)Afterword: Addressing Life: The Literary Voice in the Theory of Trauma.
Summary: Cathy Caruth proposes that in the "widespread and bewildering experience of trauma" in our century--both in its occurrence and in our attempt to understand it--we can recognize the possibility of a history no longer based on simple models of straightforward experience and reference. Through the notion of trauma, she contends, we come to a new understanding that permits history to arise where immediate understanding is impossible. In her wide-ranging discussion, Caruth engages Freud's theory of trauma as outlined in Moses and Monotheism and Beyond the Pleasure Principle; the notion of reference and the figure of the falling body in de Man, Kleist, and Kant; the narratives of personal catastrophe in Hiroshima mon amour; and the traumatic address in Lecompte's reinterpretation of Freud's narrative of the dream of the burning child.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [141]-186) and index.

Introduction: The Wound and the Voice1. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma and the Possibility of History (Freud, Moses and Monotheism)2. Literature and the Enactment of Memory (Duras, Resnais, Hiroshima mon amour)3. Traumatic Departures: Survival and History in Freud (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Moses and Monotheism) 4. The Falling Body and the Impact of Reference (de Man, Kant, Kleist) 5. Traumatic Awakenings (Freud, Lacan, and the Ethics of Memory)Afterword: Addressing Life: The Literary Voice in the Theory of Trauma.

Cathy Caruth proposes that in the "widespread and bewildering experience of trauma" in our century--both in its occurrence and in our attempt to understand it--we can recognize the possibility of a history no longer based on simple models of straightforward experience and reference. Through the notion of trauma, she contends, we come to a new understanding that permits history to arise where immediate understanding is impossible. In her wide-ranging discussion, Caruth engages Freud's theory of trauma as outlined in Moses and Monotheism and Beyond the Pleasure Principle; the notion of reference and the figure of the falling body in de Man, Kleist, and Kant; the narratives of personal catastrophe in Hiroshima mon amour; and the traumatic address in Lecompte's reinterpretation of Freud's narrative of the dream of the burning child.

Also issued online.