HISTORY AND ITS LIMITS: HUMAN, ANIMAL, VIOLENCE

Book ID/图书代码： 03360008B24903

English Summary/英文概要： 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).

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 多米尼克•拉卡普拉的《历史的局限性》明确地阐述了思想史，文化史和批判理论传记的关系，研究了近代兴起的“实践理论”，并进一步探讨了人文主义普遍形式的局限性。拉卡普拉侧重于我们对于极端情况下如何去理解这些问题，尤其是涉及其中的暴力和受害事件。他对历史学家如何看待自己也同时被牵涉期间的痛苦过程提出了疑问。在解决这些问题时，他还探究了暴力对各类写作风格的影响，并为批判理论在面对（时常轻率中带着不可思议的）无法得到完美升华的同时，如何去扮演一个独特鲜明的角色。

在《历史的局限性》一书中，拉卡普拉探究了关于转化为“后世俗”，甚至于是救世主或奇迹降临的文化现象，以及近代知名人士如乔治•阿甘本、埃里克•桑特纳和斯拉沃热•齐泽克对于这类极端事件的理论探讨。在与其相关的特质中，作者探讨了20世纪存在主义哲学的创始人（德国哲学家）马丁•海德格尔所著的《追忆》一书，如果不是那么令人困惑，我们应可以理解“艺术作品本身的本质”意义。拉卡普拉以精细地眼光有时是从内部挖掘地方式去诠释自我献身，重生或是救赎，这一系列被当代左翼或右翼知识分子，如工团主义革命派理论家（法国哲学家）乔治•索雷尔、早期的德国思想家、哲学家和马克思主义文学批评家瓦尔特•本雅明、法国哲学家，《情色论》一书的作者乔治•巴代伊、去殖民化思想家，法国马提尼克作家，散文家，心理分析学家，革命家弗朗茨•法农和德国作家恩斯特•荣格所定义的理念。(Sandy)

Awards/获奖情况：

About the Author/作者介绍： 多米尼克·拉卡普拉（DominickLaCapra）是美国著名的历史理论和文学批评理论学者，执教于康乃尔大学历史系。他在关于新历史主义、历史与文本阅读、历史与记忆等方面的研究对西方当代历史学、哲学和比较文学有重要影响。主要著作有：《反思思想史：文本、语境、语言》、《巴法利夫人之审判》、《历史与评论》、《历史、政治和小说》等。

Dominick LaCapra began teaching in the History Department at Cornell in 1969 where he is currently Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor of Humanistic Studies. He also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Comparative Literature and is a member of the graduate field of Romance Studies and the program in Jewish Studies. He served for ten years as director of Cornell’s Society for the Humanities and for four years as Associate Director and for eight years as director of the School of Criticism and Theory. In the course of his career, LaCapra’s own principal contributions have been to intellectual and cultural history and to critical theory, which he sees as closely related fields of inquiry.

Format:TRADE PAPERBACK

Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：NOT AVAILABLE

Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE

Sales in other countries/其他国家销售情况：

原文第一章内容：暂无

手稿：暂无

大纲：暂无