Part I History in theory - after Marx and Freud: old idolatry - rethinking ideology and materialism, Simon Jarvis; history and the sacred in de Man and Benjamin, Nigel Mapp; Freud and the force of history - The project for a scientific psychology, Clare Connors. Part II Traumatic histories: parting words - trauma, silence and survival, Cathy Caruth; reading trauma - Charlotte Delbo and the struggle to represent, Victoria Stewart; trauma, testimony and the survivor - calling forth the ghosts of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Stephanie Young. Part III Memory and cultural history: in the penal colony, John Frow; seance fiction - confronting the ghost(s) of the Mexican Revolution in Madero, el otro by Ignacio Solares, Robin Fiddian; the angel of memory - working through the history of the New South Africa, Christopher Colvin. Part IV Nachtraglichkeit - history and afterwardsness: history and trauma - reviewing Forrest Gump, Susannah Radstone; traumatic memories of remembering and forgetting, Elizabeth Cowie; aftermath - pastiche, the postmodern and the end of history in Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus, Rachel Carroll.