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History, Literature, Critical Theory
Dominick LaCapra (Author)
9780801478659
Paperback / softback, published 15 May 2013
248 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 1.8 cm, 0.454 kg
History, Literature, Critical Theory is a worthy addition to the LaCapra corpus, creating dialogues among history and other fields to enhance the possibilities for desirable change. As is true of much of LaCapra's workthis book defies easy disciplinary classification and will be welcomed by readers in a variety of disciplinesincluding Holocaust studies.... LaCapra stands as one of the most important critical theorists in the US todayand this work belongs in extensive collections of theory.
In History, Literature, Critical Theory, Dominick LaCapra continues his exploration of the complex relations between history and literature, here considering history as both process and representation. A trio of chapters at the center of the volume concern the ways in which history and literature (particularly the novel) impact and question each other. In one of the chapters LaCapra revisits Gustave Flaubert, pairing him with Joseph Conrad. Other chapters pair J. M. Coetzee and W. G. Sebald, Jonathan Littell's novel The Kindly Ones and Saul Friedländer's two-volume, prizewinning history Nazi Germany and the Jews. A recurrent motif of the book is the role of the sacred, its problematic status in sacrifice, its virulent manifestation in social and political violence (notably the Nazi genocide), its role or transformations in literature and art, and its multivalent expressions in "postsecular" hopes, anxieties, and quests. LaCapra concludes the volume with an essay on the place of violence in the thought of Slavoj Žižek. In LaCapra's view Žižek's provocative thought "at times has uncanny echoes of earlier reflections on, or apologies for, political and seemingly regenerative, even sacralized violence."
Introduction1. The Mutual Interrogation of History and Literature2. The Quest! The Quest! Conrad and Flaubert3. Coetzee, Sebald, and the Narrative of Trauma4. Historical and Literary Approaches to the "Final Solution": Saul Friedländer and Jonathan Littell5. The Literary, the Historical, and the Sacred: The Question of NazismEpilogue: Recent Figurations of Trauma and Violence: Tarrying with ZizekNotes
Index