The Jamesian mode of writing, it has been claimed, actively works against an understanding of the way truth, history and power circulate in his texts. Enacting History in Henry James argues instead that James' writing promises an experiential type of knowledge, one that is attained by actively participating in the power games and moral dramas that unfold within the text. Reading James thus requires not just an emotional responsiveness, but also an ethical assumption of responsibility for the act of reading. This book places James' work in a fresh theoretical context and throws new light on...

America es una sola aunque pocos lo crean, un dia por encima del Pentagono y las bananas y el petr6leo los hombres comprenderan la imbecilidad incurable de los nacionalismos. Julio Cortazar Ultimo Round The essays collected in this volurne arose out of a workshop at the 1992 Conference of the European Association for American Studies in Seville. The overall theme of that conference was "The American Colurnbiad: 'Discovering' America, Inventing the United States. " Feel- ing somewhat ill at ease with the clarification of this theme in the EAAS Newsletter of October 1990, which explained that...

This collection analyses the future of 'trauma theory', a major theoretical discourse in contemporary criticism and theory. The chapters advance the current state of the field by exploring new areas, asking new questions and making new connections.

Part one, History and Culture, begins by developing trauma theory in its more familiar post-deconstructive mode and explores how these insights might still be productive. It goes on, via a critique of existing positions, to relocate trauma theory in a postcolonial and globalized world, theoretically, aesthetically and...