The pathbreaking work that founded the field of trauma studies.In Unclaimed Experience, 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 ...

"If Freud turns to literature to describe traumatic experience, it is because literature, like psychoanalysis, is interested in the complex relation between knowing and not knowing, and it is at this specific point at which knowing and not knowing intersect that the psychoanalytic theory of traumatic experience and the language of literature meet."—from the IntroductionIn Unclaimed Experience, Cathy Caruth proposes that in the "widespread and bewildering experience of trauma"...

Paru en anglais en 1996, ce livre a profondément marqué les recherches en sciences humaines, révélant les impacts que les traumatismes peuvent avoir sur la culture.« Caruth est l'un des chercheurs les plus novateurs sur ce que nous appelons le traumatisme, et sur nos façons de percevoir et de conceptualiser ce phénomène encore mystérieux ». Robert Jay LiftonCe livre emblématique est « le premier à réaliser l'importance de la théorie du traumatisme pour les scienc...

What does it mean for history to disappear?Outstanding Academic Title, ChoiceCathy Caruth juxtaposes the writings of psychoanalysts, literary and political theorists, and literary authors who write in a century faced by a new kind of history, one that is made up of events that seem to undo, rather than produce, their own remembrance. At the heart of each chapter is the enigma of a history that, in its very unfolding, seems to be slipping away befor...

In the prevailing account of English empiricism, Locke conceived of self-understanding as a matter of mere observation, bound closely to the laws of physical perception. English Romantic poets and German critical philosophers challenged Locke's conception, arguing that it failed to account adequately for the power of thought to turn upon itself—to detach itself from the laws of the physical world. Cathy Caruth reinterprets questions at the heart of empiricism by treating Locke's text not s...

In Knowing the Suffering of Others, legal scholar Austin Sarat brings together essays that address suffering as it relates to the law, highlighting the ways law imagines suffering and how pain and suffering become jurisprudential facts.From fetal imaging to end-of-life decisions, torts to international human rights, domestic violence to torture, and the law of war to victim impact statements, the law is awash in epistemological and ethical problems associated with knowing ...

Interviews and intimate photographic portraits of witnesses to the collective and cultural significance of trauma.This new collection from Cathy Caruth features interviews with a diverse group of leaders in the theorization of, and response to, traumatic experience in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Crossing the boundaries of discipline and profession, Caruth’s subjects include literary theorists and critics, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, psychologists, ...