John McGreal's three new books – It’s Abstraction, Concretely, It’s Figuration, Groundly and It’s Representation, Really – continue the ‘It’ Series published by Matador since 2010. They constitute another stage in an artistic journey exploring the visual and audial dialectic of mark, word and image that began over 25 years ago. Emerging out of the first books on the Bibliograph published in 2016, initiated with It’s Nothing, Seriously, these new texts retain some of the same structural features. The Bibliographs contain the same focus on repetition and variation in meaning of their dominant motifs of representation, abstraction and figuration which have framed philosophical discourse on epistemology and ontology in aesthetics; their chance placement in each Bibliograph interspersed with one another displaying and enhancing similarities and differences. At the same time these works constitute a development in the aesthetic form of the Bibliograph. In earlier works on Nothing, Absence and Silence, it was just a question of finding and transferring given textual references from their source to construct their Bibliographs, with the focus being on the strategic position of the latter within each book. In these new works, the concern has been with working on the line and shape of the references themselves, with their enhanced spacial form as well as that of each Bibliograph as a whole. In shaping and spacing the referential images, the place of words and letters became as important as their semantic & syntactical role. Expansion and contraction of whole words was used to enhance this process. Under such detailed attention their breakdown into particles of language, into part-words and single letters was a result. The recombination of elements produced new words in a process of restrangement with new sequences of letters having visual rather than semantic value. The play on prefixes of dominant motifs yielded new words as did tmesis. This concern with the form of referential images does not preclude an equal commitment to their content. The aleatory character of textual entries in each Bibliograph encourage the reader to let his or her mind go; to read in a new way on diverse contemporary issues across conventional boundaries in the arts and sciences at several levels of physical, psychical and social reproduction.

Challenging current definitions of trauma, this brief but comprehensive volume features significant new research and case studies looking at how regular exposure to subtle social discrimination in the form of microaggressions can, over time, elicit similar symptoms to severe trauma.

Interviews with young Muslims in Chicago explore the complexity of identities formed at the crossroads of Islam and hip hop This groundbreaking study of race, religion and popular culture in the 21st century United States focuses on a new concept, “Muslim Cool.” Muslim Cool is a way of being an American Muslim—displayed in ideas, dress, social activism in the ’hood, and in complex relationships to state power. Constructed through hip hop and the performance of Blackness, Muslim Cool is a way of engaging with the Black American experience by both Black and non-Black young Muslims that challenges racist norms in the U.S. as well as dominant ethnic and religious structures within American Muslim communities. Drawing on over two years of ethnographic research, Su'ad Abdul Khabeer illuminates the ways in which young and multiethnic US Muslims draw on Blackness to construct their identities as Muslims. This is a form of critical Muslim self-making that builds on interconnections and intersections, rather than divisions between “Black” and “Muslim.” Thus, by countering the notion that Blackness and the Muslim experience are fundamentally different, Muslim Cool poses a critical challenge to dominant ideas that Muslims are “foreign” to the United States and puts Blackness at the center of the study of American Islam. Yet Muslim Cool also demonstrates that connections to Blackness made through hip hop are critical and contested—critical because they push back against the pervasive phenomenon of anti-Blackness and contested because questions of race, class, gender, and nationality continue to complicate self-making in the United States.

What is it for something in the mind to represent something? Distinguished philosopher of mind Robert Cummins looks at the familiar problems of representation theory (what information is represented in the mind, what form mental representation takes, how representational schemes are implemented in the brain, what it is for one thing to represent another) from an unprecedented angle. Instead of following the usual procedure of defending a version of "indicator" semantics, Cummins begins with a theory of representational error and uses this theory to constrain the account of representational content. Thus, the problem of misrepresentation, which plagues all other accounts, is avoided at the start. Cummins shows that representational error can be accommodated only if the content of a representation is intrinsic--independent of its use and causal role in the system that employs it. Cummins's theory of error is based on the teleological idea of a "target," an intentional concept but one that differs importantly from that of an ordinary intentional object. Using this notion he offers a schematic theory of representation and an account of propositional attitudes that takes exception with some popular positions, such as conceptual role semantics, Fodor's representational theory of the mind, and Putnam's twin-earth examples. A Bradford Book. Representation and Mind series

This collection discusses and illustrates how educational research is affected by the economic, institutional and physical contingencies of its time, and in our time even increasingly is driven by them. It is argued that the antidote to this is, however, not to aspire to ‘thought itself’, but instead to do justice to its own rootedness in the ‘material’, including textuality. From an historical point of view such an innovative approach can itself revamp the material scholarly culture and the way it is represented. The chapters address a variety of topics such as the cultural heritage of the school desk, the significance of images for research into long-term educational processes, the way iconic signs function, and how modes of enquiry relate to the materiality of education. Attention is also given to standards for reporting on educational research studies and how these limit the scope and communication and moreover shape researchers, to the forms of citation practices as substantially influencing methods and content, and to the centrality of conversation not just as the means to an end but as what matters; further to representational and to non-representational theories for educational research. Some examples are drawn from the area of arts-based educational research, from mathematics education, and from the discourse on universities.

The Trace of Political Representation is a philosophical analysis of the discourses, practices, and effects of representation in political institutions, with an ultimate interest in contemporary American democracy. The perspective governing its approach is derived largely from Foucault, and tempered by a range of contemporary philosophers, including Derrida, Pitkin, and Castoriadis.

This volume is a timely and necessary intervention as it provides a rich, multifaceted approach to the study of cinema and visual representation. It presents a lucid and intelligent account of twentieth century film criticism essential for students in the fields of media studies and cultural studies. It leads the reader through the major contemporary philosophical and sociocultural theories of appreciating cinematic signs and themes. The book also gathers together informed discussions about the nature and principles of literary adaptation that will greatly benefit anyone interested in this field of study.