当下的创伤理论:凯茜·凯鲁斯访谈（英文）

Trauma Theory Today:An Interview with Cathy Caruth

凯茜·凯鲁斯曾先后执教于耶鲁大学、埃默里大学,现为康奈尔大学英文系与比较文学系讲席教授。凯鲁斯在文学、精神分析及创伤等领域的研究著作深深烙上了解构主义印记,她的代表作包括《创伤:探索记忆》(1995)、《沉默的经验:创伤、叙事与历史》(1996)、《历史灰烬中的文学》(2013)及《倾听创伤》(2014)等。解友广2015年在康奈尔大学访学期间,与凯鲁斯教授进行了面对面访谈。此次访谈紧扣"当下的创伤理论"及她本人对创伤的研究著述展开。在访谈中,凯鲁斯指出了当今创伤研究的新动向,澄清了学界存在的一些错误论争,并深入探讨了她近期一直关注的创伤理论中的历史与历史性问题。凯鲁斯反对"创伤现实主义"这样的概念,强调创伤不可能被认知或被还原,只能藉行动和外部介入进行"见证"。对于文学能否见证创伤,凯鲁斯认为,虚构性叙事无法完全表征创伤,但其语言运作可以见证创伤。对语言的重新思考也是她与乔纳森·卡勒教授合开的文学理论课的终极旨归。两位教授认为,反思语言是理解和厘清当代文艺理论不同流派的一把密钥。

Cathy Caruth is Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor in Department of English and Comparative Literature at Cornell University after her teaching at Yale and Emory. Her extensive publications on literature, psychoanalysis, and trauma manifest the influence of the Yale School of Deconstruction, Paul de Man, Shoshana Felman and the late Barbara Johnson. Professor Caruth＇s seminal books include Trauma： Explorations in Memory（1995）, Unclaimed Experience： Trauma, Narrative and History（1996）, Literature in the Ashes of History（2013）, and Listening to Trauma（2014）. In 2015, Xie Youguang interviewed Cathy Caruth vis-à-vis regarding trauma theory today and her own work on trauma. Caruth discussed new directions and some long-existing false debates within trauma studies as well as her recent research on history and the historicity of the theory of trauma. She opposed concepts like ＂traumatic realism,＂ emphasizing that trauma cannot be cognized nor reached, but could only be testified to through action and intervention. As to literature＇s testimony to trauma, she deemed narrative＇s betrayal inevitable in representing trauma, but testimony to it may be achieved through the operation of language.