Understanding Others

Dominick Lacapra

Description

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.

Sujets

• Historiography

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 septembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501724909
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

UNDERSTANDING OTHERS

Also by Dominick LaCapra

Emile Durkheim: Sociologist and Philosopher(1972, 1985, 2001)

A Preface to Sartre(1978)

“Madame Bovary” on Trial(1982)

[as coeditor, with Steven L. Kaplan]Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives(1982)

Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language(1983)

History & Criticism(1985)

History, Politics, and the Novel(1987) Soundings in Critical Theory(1989) [as editor]Race: Perspectives on Hegemony and ResistanceThe Bounds of (1991) Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma(1994) History and Memory after Auschwitz(1998)

History and Reading: Tocqueville, Foucault, French Studies(2000)

Writing History, Writing Trauma(2001, 2014)

History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory(2004)

History and Its Limits: Human, Animal, Violence(2009)

History, Literature, Critical Theory(2013)

UNDERSTANDING OTHERS

PEOPL ES, ANI MAL S, PASTS

D o m i n i c k L a C a p r a

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2018 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

First published 2018 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Names: LaCapra, Dominick, 1939– author. Title: Understanding others : peoples, animals, pasts / Dominick LaCapra. Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018006953 (print) | LCCN 2018007920 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501724909 (pdf ) | ISBN 9781501724916 (ret) | ISBN 9781501724893 | ISBN 9781501724893 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501724923 (pbk. ; alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Other (Philosophy) | Empathy— Philosophy. | Compassion—Philosophy. | Humanities—Philosophy. Classification: LCC BD213 (ebook) | LCC BD213 .L325 2018 (print) | DDC 190—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006953

Cover art: Hopi “Yowe” katsina figure carved by Aaron Honyumptewa, from the author’s collection. Photograph by the author.

To the many “rescue” animals with whom we have shared life for over forty years

It must not be supposed . . . that transference is created by analysis and does not occur apart from it. Transference is merely uncovered and isolated by analysis. It is a universal phenomenon of the human mind, it decides the success of all medical influence, and in fact dominates the whole of each person’s relations to his human environment. Sigmund Freud,An Autobiographical Study(1925)

We’re all in this together.

Senator Bernie Sanders (2016)

Why rob a bank when you can own one? Mackie Messer in Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill,The Threepenny Opera(1928)

A melancholy point of view, for it bases the world order on a lie. Franz Kafka, “Before the Law” (1915)

Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. Antonio Gramsci, letter from prison (1929)

Co nte nts

Introduction 1. History, Deconstruction, and Working through the Past 2. Humans, Other Animals, and the Humanities 3. Trauma, History, Memory, Identity: What Remains? 4. Frank Hamilton Cushing and His “Adventures” at Zuni 5. What Is History? What Is Literature? 6. What Use Are the Humanities? Index

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UNDERSTANDING OTHERS