ABSTRACT

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.

chapter |12 pages

Introduction

part |2 pages

Part One

chapter 1|23 pages

I Refuse to Inherit

chapter 2|25 pages

Certain Old and Lovely Things

part |2 pages

Part Two

chapter 3|21 pages

To Silence the Flutes

chapter 4|22 pages

Texts of Pleasure, Texts of Bliss

chapter 5|23 pages

Identity Questions

part |2 pages

Part Three

chapter 6|19 pages

Make-up, Masks, Cameras and Chromosomes

chapter 7|23 pages

Magic, Not Art I

chapter 8|18 pages

Magic, Not Art II