In A Grand Materialism in the New Art from China, Mary Bittner Wiseman shows that material matters in the work of Chinese artists, where the goal is to call attention to its subjects through the directness and immediacy of its material, like dust from 9/11, 1001 Chinese citizens, paintings made with gunpowder, written words, or the specificity of its sites, like the Three Gorges Dam. Artists are working below the level of language where matter and gesture, texture and touch, instinct and intuition live. Not reduced to the words applied to them, art's subjects appear in their concrete particularity, embedded in the stories of their materials or their sites. Wiseman argues that it is global in being able to be understood by all, as are the materials in the new art and the stories that accompany them: here are items from Song Dong's mother's home in the Cultural Revolution, here is dust from 6/11.Finally, it satisfies Arthur Danto's characterization of art asany representation that shows something new about its subject or puts it in a new light, by way of a rhetorical figure that the viewer interprets. Danto has given criteria for a given work's making the case for itself hat it is art. The material art from China is the paradigm for an art that is global and contemporary.

In this book, first published in 1989, Mary Bittner Wiseman interprets Roland Barthes's experiments as efforts to reposition the human subject with respect to language and to time in order to let the subject escape from the language of a particular culture and the present time. With her insistent pushing against the boundaries of our standard academic assumptions, Mary Bittner Wiseman succeeds in interpreting Barthes's effort to join the traditional and the new. This title will be of interest to students of literature and philosophy.

Interpretation, Relativism, and Identity: Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Krausz addresses three major philosophical themes: interpretation, relativism, and identity. It does so by focusing on Krausz's distinctive exploration of the relationship between interpretation and ontology, the varieties of relativism, and the interpretive dimension of identity construction. Throughout the years, Krausz has participated in exchanges between people who embrace opposing views about reality, human selves, and the attachments or detachments between them. In these exchanges, life orientations are at stake as much as conceptual distinctions. These exchanges are reflected in a discussion among renowned scholars in philosophy and literary studies not only on Krausz's work but also on the significant philosophical implications of key issues for how we understand the human condition, our commitments and values, the meaning of religious and artistic texts, and the way we make sense of our lives and ourselves. The contributors to this volume engage with all of these concerns in their dialogue with Krausz and with one another. The range and versatility of Krausz's conceptual apparatus can benefit students and scholars with interests in interpretative endeavors, different ontological commitments, and various conceptual priorities and preferences.

In this book, first published in 1989, Mary Bittner Wiseman interprets Roland Barthes's experiments as efforts to reposition the human subject with respect to language and to time in order to let the subject escape from the language of a particular culture and the present time. With her insistent pushing against the boundaries of our standard academic assumptions, Mary Bittner Wiseman succeeds in interpreting Barthes's effort to join the traditional and the new. This title will be of interest to students of literature and philosophy.