Signs of change
Subtitle: premodern, modern, postmodern
By: edited by Stephen Barker.
Contributors: Barker, Stephen, 1946-; International Association for Philosophy and Literature. Meeting
Series: Contemporary studies in philosophy and literature ;; 4
Publisher: State University of New York Press; SUNY Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Albany
Language: eng
Number of pages: 440
Subjects: Literature -- Philosophy -- Congresses.; Literature -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc. -- Congresses.
Description: This book examines the nature of change in history, philosophy, and culture. Precisely because the idea of change is so vast, the book's strategy is to exercise some control over it by organizing itself as a structured progression of theoretical, political, and ideological concerns whose focus is on change.

Barker begins with the idea of history and historicity and proceeds through an investigation of the relationship of semiotics and hermeneutics to change, to topography and topology as functions of change, to sexuality and gender as political aspects of a hypothetical theory of change, and to the seemingly culminative issue of life and death themselves as functions of change. Finally, the book concludes with a "coda" concerning alterity both as concept and as lived and literary phenomenon ranging from the avant-garde's "drunkenness" to the alterity of the characters in Chinese poetry.

Not only does the book not attempt to make categorical statements about the nature of change, but it delights in an open-ended discussion of the implications and reverberations of change throughout the world of human experience.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 421-435) and index.
Selected papers, most revised, from the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the International Association for Philosophy and Literature (IAPL), held May 1991 at the Université de Montréal, in collaboration with Concordia University and other institutions.