Soundings in Critical Theory

Dominick LaCapra

Published by Cornell University Press 2016

Soundings in Critical Theory

Dominick LaCapra

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501705199

Overview
Contents

About this book

In Soundings in Critical Theory, Dominick LaCapra continues his attempt to fashion a historiography that is at once critical and self-critical—a project he initiated in Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language (1983); and History and Criticism (1985), both available from Cornell University Press. This new collection of essays offers a provocative assessment of the nature of historical understanding and the role of critical theory in historical understanding; of the practice of historical writing as a dialogic exchange both with the past and among professional historians and critics; and of the problem of how to read texts and documents in relation to processes of contextual understanding.

A central concern of the volume is the interaction between Marxism, psychoanalysis, and postmodernism, and all of the essays demonstrate the complex ways in which this trio of critical theories continues to affect how historians frame their task. LaCapra first provides a general appraisal of the problems and possibilities of criticism as a genre that questions its own limits, and examines the roles of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, and Mikhail Bakhtin in the development of contemporary criticism. Subsequent chapters address such issues as the implications of psychoanalysis for the writing of history, the debate between Robert Darnton and Roger Chartier concerning the status of the symbolic dimension in history, and the problem of how best to read and make use of Marx's work. LaCapra concludes by exploring the larger project of forging viable links between history and critical theory and by evaluating the contributions of deconstruction and the new historicism to this project.

Contemporary cultural and intellectual historians, literary theorists and critics, philosophers, and social scientists will welcome this book.

Author / Editor information

Dominick LaCapra is Professor Emeritus of History and Comparative Literature and Bowmar Professor Emeritus of Humanistic Studies at Cornell University. He is the author of many books, including History, Literature, Critical Theory; History and Its Limits: Human, Animal, Violence; and History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory.

Reviews

Michael Roth, Scripps College, The Claremont Graduate School:

LaCapra has become an important voice in contemporary critical work in the human sciences, and in this volume he continues to articulate issues and problems in a way that forces people in a variety of disciplines to examine their assumptions and rethink their strategies.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Criticism Today Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	11
2. History and Psychoanalysis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	30
3. Chartier, Darnton, and the Great Symbol Massacre Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
4. The Temporality of Rhetoric Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	90
5. Culture and Ideology: From Geertz to Marx Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
6. Up against the Ear of the Other: Marx after Derrida Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
7. Intellectual History and Critical Theory Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	182
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 228
Keywords: Literary Studies

eBook

Published: November 1, 2016
ISBN: 9781501705199