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.