Main description:

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, political activists, filmmakers, public intellectuals, institutional leaders, and researchers. Exploring the intertwining of the intellectual and personal dimensions of experience, each interview is accompanied by Caruth's intimate photographic portrait of its subject. Caruth chose her subjects because of their impact on her thinking as well as their significant role as witnesses to the collective and cultural significance of trauma. The individuals profiled here are innovators in the theory of trauma (Part I), in the clinical, activist, or testimonial interventions in trauma (Part II), or in the creation or modification of institutions that provide therapeutic, artistic, or legal responses to traumatic events (Part III). Two of the interviews first appeared in Caruth's landmark 1995 work, Trauma: Explorations in Memory.
The rest were conducted between 2011 and 2013 after the field of trauma studies expanded significantly. Representing both the foundation of trauma research and cutting-edge approaches to the topic, this collection will be useful to practitioners with an interest in post-traumatic stress disorder as well as scholars exploring the multiple dimensions of profound human experience. A portion of the proceeds from sales of this book will go to the Grady Nia Project for abused, suicidal, and low-income African American women.

Contents:

Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Learning to Listen
Part I: Death in Theory
1. Giving Death Its Due: An Interview with Robert Jay Lifton (June 8, 1990, New York, New York)
2. Traumatic Temporality: An Interview with Jean Laplanche (October 23, 1994, Paris, France)
3. A Record That Has Yet to Be Made: An Interview with Dori Laub (June 15-16, 2013, Woodbury, Connecticut)
4. Mad Witnesses: A Conversation with Francoise Davoine andJean-Max Gaudilliere (May 18, 2012, Burgundy, France)
Part II: A Revolutionary Act
5. The AIDS Crisis Is Not Over: A Conversation with Gregg Bordowitz,Douglas Crimp, and Laura Pinsky. Conducted with Thomas Keenan (September 25, 1991, New York, New York)
6. The Politics of Trauma: A Conversation with Judith Herman (May 16, 2013, Cambridge, Massachusetts)
7. The Body Keeps the Score: An Interview with Bessel van der Kolk (June 17, 2013, Boston, Massachusetts)
8. The Haunted Self: An Interview with Onno van der Hart (July 16, 2013, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
9. Words and Wounds: An Interview with Geoffrey Hartman (September 11, 1994, New Haven, Connecticut)
10. A Revolutionary Act-The Video Testimonies of the Nia Project: An Interview with Members of the Grady Nia Team (October 2 and 9, 2012, Atlanta, Georgia)
Part III: The System Is Weeping
11. Apocalypse Terminable and Interminable: An Interview with Arthur S. Blank Jr. (January 23, 2013, Washington, DC)
12. Filming Madness: A Conversation with Mieke Bal and Francoise Davoine (November 26, 2011, Vevey, Switzerland)
13. A Ghost in the House of Justice: A Conversation with Shoshana Felman (August 7, 2013, Tel Aviv, Israel)
Index