Because traumatic events are unbearable in their horror and intensity,
they often exist as memories that are not immediately recognizable as
truth. Such experiences are best understood not only through the
straightforward acquisition of facts but through a process of
discovering where and why conscious understanding and memory fail.
Literature, according to Cathy Caruth and others, opens a window on
traumatic experience because it teaches readers to listen to what can be
told only in indirect and surprising ways. Sociology, film, and
political activism can also provide new ways of thinking about and
responding to the experience of trauma.
In Trauma and Memory, a distinguished group of analysts and critics
offer a compelling look at what literature and the new approaches of a
variety of clinical and theoretical disciplines bring to the
understanding of traumatic experience. Combining two highly-acclaimed
special issues of American Imago edited by Caruth, this
interdisciplinary collection of essays and interviews will be of
interest to analysts and critics concerned with the notion of trauma and
the problem of interpretation and, more generally, to those interested
in current discussions of subjects such as child abuse, AIDS, and the
effects of historical atrocities such as the Holocaust.
Contributions by: Georges Bataille, Harold Bloom, Laura Brown, Cathy
Caruth, Kai Erikson, Shoshana Felman, Henry Krystal, Claude Lanzmann,
Dori Laub, Kevin Newmark, Onno van der Hart, and Bessel van der Kolk.
Interviews with: Robert Jay Lifton, Gregg Bordowitz, Douglas Crimp,
and Laura Pinsky
