Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History

Rating:
Summary: Poor Analysis
Review: I was excited to read this book when I found out about it, but I was severely dissapointed by the analysis Caruth gives. The texts and problems she addresses are rich and full of material to be sifted through, but her analysis is too quick to make equivalences and parallels where there are none. I found this to be the case most prominently in the chapters on Freud's "Moses and Monotheism." If you follow her logic carefully, she attempts to demonstrate that Freud exhibited repetition (in rewriting "Moses and Monotheism") before he experiences trauma (of being forced to leave Germany). To my knowledge, traumatic repetition is supposed to FOLLOW the traumatic incident. In addition, insofar as she depends on "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," she simply ignores the argument Freud gives for the death drive, and reduces repetition to trauma alone. However, Freud makes the case in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" that trauma alone is NOT sufficient to understand repetition. I would have been more sympathetic with Caruth's reading if she had made an argument as to why this was not the case, but she does not.