Social Appearances: A Philosophy of Display and Prestige

Barbara Carnevali

Published by Columbia University Press 2019

Social Appearances

A Philosophy of Display and Prestige

Barbara Carnevali
Translated by: Zakiya Hanafi

In the series Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts

https://doi.org/10.7312/carn18706

Overview
Contents

About this book

In this strikingly original book, Barbara Carnevali offers a philosophical examination of the roles that appearances play in social life. While Western metaphysics and morals have predominantly disdained appearances and expelled them from their domain, Carnevali invites us to look at society, ancient to contemporary, as an aesthetic phenomenon.

Author / Editor information

Barbara Carnevali is associate professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, where she holds a chair in social aesthetics. Her books include Romantisme et reconnaissance. Figures de la conscience chez Rousseau (2012).

Reviews

Edmund White, author of The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading:
Every sentence in this brilliant book is a unit of thought; it’s as epigrammatic as Nietzsche and as seamlessly developed as, say, Hume. And it helps that it’s new. Carnevali has restored aesthetics to its central role in philosophy.

Eva Illouz, author of The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations:
Oscar Wilde famously quipped that only shallow people do not judge by appearances. This elegant, profound, and erudite book explores the startling proposition that we may indeed be what we seem. The reader of this book will not fail to be convinced that 'appearances' are constitutive of society.

Blake Gopnik, author of Warhol:
Barbara Carnevali's concept of 'social aesthetics' is tremendously powerful, and explains a lot of otherwise baffling phenomena. Carnevali makes me think that the rise of Orban and Trump and the Brexit movement is better understood as a matter of social 'taste' than in terms of ideology, or economics, or identity.

Simon Critchley, author of Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us:
This is a powerful and paradigm-shifting aesthetics of society, by a great philosophical talent.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Prologue Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
PART I. APPEARING: ON THE AESTHETIC FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIAL LIFE
1. Life as a Spectacle: Self- Display, Reflexivity, and Artifice Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
2. Masks and Clothes: Medial Surfaces and the Dialectic of Appearing Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	20
3. Aesthetic Mediation: A Theory of Representations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	28
4. Figures: Social Images Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
5. Out of Control: The Alienated Image Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	41
PART II. VANITY AND LIES: ON THE HOSTILITY TOWARD APPEARANCES
6. “Vanity Fair”: The Frivolity of Worldliness Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
7. Against the Mask: The Rise of Social Romanticism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
8. Against the Spectacle: The Crusade of Romantic Anticapitalism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
9. Against Aesthetic Values: Aestheticism, Aestheticization, and Staging Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	96
10. Two Baptisms and a Divorce: Homo Economicus Versus Homo Aestheticus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
PART III. TOWARD A SOCIAL AESTHETICS: ON THE SENSIBLE LOGIC OF SOCIETY
11. The Opening: Aesthetic Foundations of the Common World Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
12. Aisthesis: Senses and Social Sensibility Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	150
13. Social Taste and the Will to Please Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	166
14. Aesthetic Labor and Social Design: The Value of Appearances Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
15. Prestige and Other Magic Spells Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	190
Conclusion: Social Immaterialism or the Philosophy of Andy Warhol Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209
Afterword Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
Appendix: Illustrations Mentioned in the Text Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	271

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: September 30, 2020
ISBN: 9780231546980