凱茜·凱魯斯曾先后執教于耶魯大學、埃默里大學,現為康奈爾大學英文系與比較文學系講席教授。凱魯斯在文學、精神分析及創傷等領域的研究著作深深烙上了解構主義印記,她的代表作包括《創傷:探索記憶》(1995)、《沉默的經驗:創傷、敘事與歷史》(1996)、《歷史灰燼中的文學》(2013)及《傾聽創傷》(2014)等。解友廣2015年在康奈爾大學訪學期間,與凱魯斯教授進行了面對面訪談。此次訪談緊扣"當下的創傷理論"及她本人對創傷的研究著述展開。在訪談中,凱魯斯指出了當今創傷研究的新動向,澄清了學界存在的一些錯誤論爭,并深入探討了她近期一直關注的創傷理論中的歷史與歷史性問題。凱魯斯反對"創傷現實主義"這樣的概念,強調創傷不可能被認知或被還原,只能藉行動和外部介入進行"見證"。對于文學能否見證創傷,凱魯斯認為,虛構性敘事無法完全表征創傷,但其語言運作可以見證創傷。對語言的重新思考也是她與喬納森·卡勒教授合開的文學理論課的終極旨歸。兩位教授認為,反思語言是理解和厘清當代文藝理論不同流派的一把密鑰。

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.