{"product_id":"social-appearances-9780231187060","title":"Social Appearances","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is a powerful and paradigm-shifting aesthetics of society, by a great philosophical talent. -- Simon Critchley, author of \u003ci\u003eTragedy, the Greeks, and Us\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBarbara 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. -- Blake Gopnik, author of \u003ci\u003eWarhol\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOscar 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. -- Eva Illouz, author of \u003ci\u003eThe End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEvery 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. -- Edmund White, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003ePrologue\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart I. Appearing: On the Aesthetic Foundations of Social Life\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1. Life as a Spectacle: Self-Display, Reflexivity, and Artifice\u003cbr\u003e2. Masks and Clothes: Medial Surfaces and the Dialectic of Appearing\u003cbr\u003e3. Aesthetic Mediation: A Theory of Representations\u003cbr\u003e4. Figures: Social Images\u003cbr\u003e5. Out of Control: The Alienated Image\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart II. Vanity and Lies: On the Hostility Toward Appearances\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e6. “Vanity Fair”: The Frivolity of Worldliness\u003cbr\u003e7. Against the Mask: The Rise of Social Romanticism\u003cbr\u003e8. Against the Spectacle: The Crusade of Romantic Anticapitalism\u003cbr\u003e9. Against Aesthetic Values: Aestheticism, Aestheticization, and Staging\u003cbr\u003e10. Two Baptisms and a Divorce: Homo Economicus Versus Homo Aestheticus\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart III. Toward a Social Aesthetics: On the Sensible Logic of Society\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e11. The Opening: Aesthetic Foundations of the Common World\u003cbr\u003e12. Aisthesis: Senses and Social Sensibility\u003cbr\u003e13. Social Taste and the Will to Please\u003cbr\u003e14. Aesthetic Labor and Social Design: The Value of Appearances\u003cbr\u003e15. Prestige and Other Magic Spells\u003cbr\u003eConclusion: Social Immaterialism or the Philosophy of Andy Warhol\u003cbr\u003eAfterword\u003cbr\u003eAppendix: Illustrations Mentioned in the Text\u003cbr\u003eNotes\u003cbr\u003eIndex","brand":"Columbia University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49400328814935,"sku":"9780231187060","price":85.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780231187060.jpg?v=1730470403","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/social-appearances-9780231187060","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}