Bettina G. Bergo – författare

These essays unfold a complex picture from phenomenology to Talmudic readings. The essays show how radically Levinas expanded genetic phenomenology toward preconscious and intersubjective affectivity. They discuss Levinas' appropriation of Heidegger’s early hermeneutics as secular revelation of what-is toward a phenomenology of the unseen, adapting Maimonides' two-leveled conception of language. Pursuing the source of Heidegger's ontological difference to Eckhart, the book unearths the important influence of Maimonides on Eckhart, and Levinas' recourse to Maimonides' negative theology. It then explores two strains of biblical hermeneutics: a Hassidic source, via Buber, and a rationalist one, through Levinas. It closes with a consideration of politics, both revolutionary and that of “difference.”

Provides multiple and accessible perspectives on trauma both as a condition and as a cultural phenomenon.More than a psychiatric or spiritual condition, trauma is an experience that exceeds the capacity of language to fix and settle it. As trauma crosses the lives of individuals and erupts into cultural and historical collectivities, it invites comparison with psychological dilemmas. But how best to compare individual and social trauma? What is the relationship between physical trauma and psychic trauma? How do cultures recover from trauma? To address these and other questions, the essays in The Trauma Controversy plumb the significance of various notions of trauma from a variety of perspectives and disciplines. Adopting psychoanalytic, clinical, historical, anthropological, and philosophical frameworks as well as engaging the ideas of a diverse range of thinkers, including Merleau-Ponty, Freud, Foucault, Heidegger, and Kristeva, The Trauma Controversy takes a productive and important step in advancing our understanding of trauma.