Background
LaCapra, Dominick Charles was born on July 13, 1939 in New York City. Son of Joseph and Mildred (Sciascia) LaC.
( Trauma and its aftermath pose acute problems for histor...)
Trauma and its aftermath pose acute problems for historical representation and understanding. In Writing History, Writing Trauma, Dominick LaCapra critically analyzes attempts by theorists and literary critics to come to terms with trauma and with the crucial role post-traumatic testimonies―notably Holocaust testimonies―assume in thought and in writing. These attempts are addressed in a series of six interlocking essays that adapt psychoanalytic concepts to historical analysis, while employing sociocultural and political critique to elucidate trauma and its aftereffects in culture and in people. This updated edition includes a substantive new preface that reconsiders some of the issues raised in the book.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1421414007/?tag=2022091-20
( Perhaps the leading Western intellectual of his time, J...)
Perhaps the leading Western intellectual of his time, Jean-Paul Sartre has written highly influential works in a diverse number of subject areas: philosophy, literature, biography, autobiography, and the theory of history. The concise and lucidly-written A Preface to Sartre discusses the French philosopher's contributions in all of these fields. Making imaginative use of the insights of some of the most important contemporary French thinkers (notably Jacques Derrida), Dominick LaCapra seeks to bring about an active confrontation between Sartre and his critics in terms that transcend the opposition between existentialism and structuralism. Referring wherever appropriate to important events in Sartre's life, he illuminates such difficult works as Being and Nothingness and the Critique of Dialectical Reason, and places Sartre in relation to the traditions that he has explicitly rejected. LaCapra also offers close and sensitive interpretations of Nausea, of the autobiography, The Words, and of Sartre's biographical studies of Baudelaire, Genet, and Flaubert. "I envision intellectual history," writes laCapra, "as a critical, informed, and stimulating conversation with the past through the medium of the texts of major thinkers. Who else in our recent past is a more fascinating interlocutor than Sartre?"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801494486/?tag=2022091-20
( Trauma and its often symptomatic aftermath pose acute p...)
Trauma and its often symptomatic aftermath pose acute problems for historical representation and understanding. In Writing History, Writing Trauma, Dominick LaCapra provides a broad-ranging, critical inquiry into the problem of trauma, notably with respect to major historical events. In a series of interlocking essays, he explores theoretical and literary-critical attempts to come to terms with trauma as well as the crucial role post-traumatic testimonies—particularly Holocaust testimonies—have assumed in recent thought and writing. In doing so, he adapts psychoanalytic concepts to historical analysis and employs sociocultural and political critique to elucidate trauma and its after effects in culture and in people. In the first chapter LaCapra addresses trauma from the perspective of history as a discipline. He then lays a theoretical groundwork for the book as a whole, exploring the concept of historical specificity and insisting on the difference between transhistorical and historical trauma. Subsequent chapters consider how Holocaust testimonies raise the problem of the role of affect and empathy in historical understanding, and respond to the debates surrounding Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. The book's concluding essay, "Writing (About) Trauma," examines the various ways that the voice of trauma emerges in written and oral accounts of historical events. Theoretically ambitious and historically informed, Writing History, Writing Trauma is an important contribution from one of today's foremost experts on trauma.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801864968/?tag=2022091-20
(Dominick LaCapra calls for a new view of intellectual his...)
Dominick LaCapra calls for a new view of intellectual history―one that will revitalize the importance of reading and interpreting significant texts. In ten essays, he reformulates the problem of the relation between the "great" texts of the Western tradition and their contexts. Seeking to refine "context" into a concept useful to historical research, LaCapra urges intellectual historians to learn from lessons and developments in contemporary literary criticism and philosophy, fields that have undertaken a radical reassessment of the reading of texts.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801498864/?tag=2022091-20
( In this study Dominick LaCapra addresses the ongoing co...)
In this study Dominick LaCapra addresses the ongoing concern with the application of theory - namely that of literary studies and linguistics - to contemporary historical research and analysis. History and Reading is an attempt to address the concerns of those scholars who either resist theoretical discussions or disavow the use of interdisciplinary study. LaCapra begins with an extensive discussion of the problem of reading and interpretation as it relates to the understanding of history. The focus then moves to two classic texts that serve as case studies: Alexis de Tocqueville's Old Régime and the French Revolution and Michel Foucault's Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie . l'âge classique (partially translated into English as Madness and Civilization). In the final chapter, LaCapra deals with the problem of rethinking and reconfiguring French studies, suggesting how this discipline could itself profit from the theoretical innovations for which it has been so important a conduit in the last few decades. LaCapra offers sensitive readings of Tocqueville and Foucault, authors who present vastly different narrative strategies and modes of analysis. Looking at these and other theorists whose work addresses the writing and understanding of history, he considers how their distinctive textual practices have transformed standard modes of interpretation and analysis. A distinguished and widely respected European historian, LaCapra offers a sophisticated consideration of how to combine textual analysis with traditional historical practices, and shows how this practice can be brought to bear on French studies and help to shape its future directions.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802082009/?tag=2022091-20
( Dominick LaCapra's History and Its Limits articulates t...)
Dominick LaCapra's History and Its Limits articulates the relations among intellectual history, cultural history, and critical theory, examining the recent rise of "Practice Theory" and probing the limitations of prevalent forms of humanism. LaCapra focuses on the problem of understanding extreme cases, specifically events and experiences involving violence and victimization. He asks how historians treat and are simultaneously implicated in the traumatic processes they attempt to represent. In addressing these questions, he also investigates violence's impact on various types of writing and establishes a distinctive role for critical theory in the face of an insufficiently discriminating aesthetic of the sublime (often unreflectively amalgamated with the uncanny). In History and Its Limits, LaCapra inquires into the related phenomenon of a turn to the "postsecular," even the messianic or the miraculous, in recent theoretical discussions of extreme events by such prominent figures as Giorgio Agamben, Eric L. Santner, and Slavoj Zizek. In a related vein, he discusses Martin Heidegger's evocative, if not enchanting, understanding of "The Origin of the Work of Art." LaCapra subjects to critical scrutiny the sometimes internally divided way in which violence has been valorized in sacrificial, regenerative, or redemptive terms by a series of important modern intellectuals on both the far right and the far left, including Georges Sorel, the early Walter Benjamin, Georges Bataille, Frantz Fanon, and Ernst Jünger. Violence and victimization are prominent in the relation between the human and the animal. LaCapra questions prevalent anthropocentrism (evident even in theorists of the "posthuman") and the long-standing quest for a decisive criterion separating or dividing the human from the animal. LaCapra regards this attempt to fix the difference as misguided and potentially dangerous because it renders insufficiently problematic the manner in which humans treat other animals and interact with the environment. In raising the issue of desirable transformations in modernity, History and Its Limits examines the legitimacy of normative limits necessary for life in common and explores the disconcerting role of transgressive initiatives beyond limits (including limits blocking the recognition that humans are themselves animals).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801475155/?tag=2022091-20
("The quality of this work is so high that it will challen...)
"The quality of this work is so high that it will challenge and reward even readers whose critical presuppositions diverge from those which LaCapra represents so provocatively."―Richard Terdiman, University of California, Santa Cruz"LaCapra here writes cogently on the historicity of literature. His readings of texts are sensitive, controlled, and engagingly illuminating. In each and every instance, the specialized reader as well as the beginning student will find them rewarding."―Wlad Godzich, Université de Montréal
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801495776/?tag=2022091-20
(Dominick LaCapra focuses on the interactions among histor...)
Dominick LaCapra focuses on the interactions among history, memory, and ethicopolitical concerns as they emerge in the aftermath of the Shoah. Particularly notable are his analyses of Albert Camus's novella The Fall, Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah, and Art Spiegelman's "comic book" Maus. LaCapra also considers the Historians' Debate in the aftermath of German reunification and the role of psychoanalysis in historical understanding and critical theory.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801484960/?tag=2022091-20
(In Emile Durkheim: Sociologist and Philosopher, Dominick ...)
In Emile Durkheim: Sociologist and Philosopher, Dominick LaCapra, a leading theoretical historian, offers an important revised critical analysis of Durkheim's methodological and philosophical pursuits, with an emphasis on the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical problems inherent in forming constructs of the cultural and social spheres.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1888570601/?tag=2022091-20
LaCapra, Dominick Charles was born on July 13, 1939 in New York City. Son of Joseph and Mildred (Sciascia) LaC.
Bachelor, Cornell University, 1961. Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University, 1970.
Tutor, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967-1969; assistant professor of history, Cornell Univercity, Ithaca, New York, 1969-1974; associate professor, Cornell Univercity, Ithaca, New York, 1974-1979; professor of history, Cornell Univercity, Ithaca, New York, since 1979; Goldwin Smith professor European intellectual history, Cornell Univercity, Ithaca, 1985-1992; Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar professor humanistic studies, Cornell Univercity, Ithaca, since 1992. Associate director School of Criticism and Theory Cornell Univercity, since 1997.
(In Emile Durkheim: Sociologist and Philosopher, Dominick ...)
(In Emile Durkheim: Sociologist and Philosopher, Dominick ...)
( Dominick LaCapra's History and Its Limits articulates t...)
( Perhaps the leading Western intellectual of his time, J...)
( In this study Dominick LaCapra addresses the ongoing co...)
("The quality of this work is so high that it will challen...)
(Dominick LaCapra calls for a new view of intellectual his...)
(Dominick LaCapra calls for a new view of intellectual his...)
(Dominick LaCapra focuses on the interactions among histor...)
( Defying comprehension, the tragic history of the Holoca...)
( Trauma and its often symptomatic aftermath pose acute p...)
("LaCapra offers an intriguing collection of essays to sup...)
( Trauma and its aftermath pose acute problems for histor...)
(Book by Lacapra, Dominick)
(Reprint)
(1)
Member Modern Language Association, American History Association, International Association Philosophy and Literature, Society Phenomenological and Existential Philosophy, American Comparative Literature Association, Society for the Humanities (dir.1993-2003). Fellow American Academy Arts & Sciences.
Married Anne-Marie Hlasny, June 15,1965 (divorced). 1 daughter, Veronique.