To what extent do we and can we understand others-other peoples, species, times, and places? What is the role of others within ourselves, epitomized in the notion of unconscious forces? Can we come to terms with our internalized others in ways that foster mutual understanding and counteract the tendency to scapegoat, project, victimize, and indulge in prejudicial and narcissistic impulses? How do various fields or disciplines address or avoid such questions? And have these questions become particularly pressing and not in the least confined to other peoples, times, and places?

Making selective and critical use of the thought of such important figures as Sigmund Freud, Jacques Derrida, and Mikhail Bakhtin, in Understanding Others Dominick LaCapra investigates a series of crucial topics from the current state of deconstruction, trauma studies, and the humanities to newer fields such as animal studies and posthumanist scholarship. LaCapra adroitly brings critical historical thought into a provocative engagement with politics and our current political climate. This is LaCapra at his best, critically rethinking major currents and exploring the old and the new in combination, often suggesting what this means in the age of Trump.

About the Author

Dominick LaCapra is Professor Emeritus of History and Comparative Literature and Bowmar Professor Emeritus of Humanistic Studies at Cornell University. He is the author of many books, including History, Literature, Critical Theory; History and Its Limits: Human, Animal, Violence; and History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory.

Reviews

One idea that has permeated Dominick LaCapra's work from the beginning is that historical texts pose questions to their readers. They call assumptions into question, render the familiar strange, and challenge contemporary habits of thought... LaCapra's latest volume [is] a stimulating model of how to engage carefully with texts that call into question some of the dominant modes of selfhood in our time.

* AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW *

In this defiantly political book, Dominick LaCapra pairs Freud with Derrida to expose the psychological and historical processes underpinning the persecution of human and non-human others... LaCapra's great skill is in revivifying the methods of psychoanalysis and deconstruction, not as tools for the couch or the academy, but, in enabling 'a dialogical relation to the past,' as tools with which to build a post-human future.

* FRENCH STUDIES *



Book Information
ISBN 9781501724923
Author Dominick LaCapra
Format Paperback
Page Count 204
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 16mm