Cornell University Press Understanding Others: Peoples, Animals, Pasts

To what extent do we and can we understand others―other peoples, species, times, and places? What is the role of others within ourselves, epitomized in the notion of unconscious forces? Can we come to terms with our internalized others in ways that foster mutual understanding and counteract the tendency to scapegoat, project, victimize, and indulge in prejudicial and narcissistic impulses? How do various fields or disciplines address or avoid such questions? And have these questions become particularly pressing and not in the least confined to other peoples, times, and places? Making selective and critical use of the thought of such important figures as Sigmund Freud, Jacques Derrida, and Mikhail Bakhtin, in Understanding Others Dominick LaCapra investigates a series of crucial topics from the current state of deconstruction, trauma studies, and the humanities to newer fields such as animal studies and posthumanist scholarship. LaCapra adroitly brings critical historical thought into a provocative engagement with politics and our current political climate. This is LaCapra at his best, critically rethinking major currents and exploring the old and the new in combination, often suggesting what this means in the age of Trump. Review "Dominick LaCapra’s latest manuscript represents a synthesis of his thinking on a wide variety of topics, from trauma to anthropocentrism. Most important, he develops the Freudian concept of ‘working through’ in a far more sustained manner than he has previously, demonstrating how a critical theory based on a self-conscious, rigorous assessment of the ‘transferential relation’ in which all subjects are mutually implicated disrupts seemingly self-sufficient and linear narratives." Author: Carolyn Dean, Charles J. Stille Professor of History and French, Yale University "LaCapra is one of the best and most original minds in intellectual history and his ability to stay at the forefront of the humanities and historical theory is simply quite amazing. LaCapra is a master at assembling a series of essays into a cohesive whole to shape a work whose parts could be read individually but that taken together offer something more." Author: Ethan Kleinberg, Professor of History and Letters, Director of the Center for the Humanities, Wesleyan University About the Author 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.