The current revolutions in biology and computers, and their implications for ethics and politics, raise a host of new questions for which the arts, traditional humanistic disciplines and Enlightenment modes of rationality may seem ill-prepared. What good is it even to talk about the human if a humanist like Katherine Hayles is right in arguing that we live in a post-human age?
In Part I (Artlink, December 2001) the subject called Art History was challenged, using the terms art and work of art in a conventional way. Here in Part II it is argued that some of the woes of art theory can be alleviated by understanding these terms in a different way. Brook discusses the role of cultural memes in creating different kinds of historiesand the doctrine of creativity. He here concludes that it is perfectly understandable that, as metaphysical explorers, we may address works of art with little or no respect for the author's intentions. In the end, he states, it depends upon the regularities of the real world.
