Hiding

Mark C. Taylor ; with a foreword by Jack Miles

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Author(s)

Mark C. Taylor, Jack Miles

Publication, year

Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 1997

Scope

350 Pages, illustrated, 23 cm.

ISBN

0226791599

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In 'Hiding', philosopher and cultural critic Mark C. Taylor extends his ongoing investigation of postmodern worlds by critically examining a wide range of contemporary cultural practices. The postmodern world, Taylor argues, is a world of surfaces, and the postmodern condition is one of profound superficiality. To him this disappearance of depth is actually a liberation, repleat with creative possibilities. Taylor introduces readers to a popular culture in which detectives—like Paul Auster and Dennis Potter, lift surfaces only to find more surfaces, and in which fashion advertising plays transparency against hiding. Body piercing and tattooing, skin diseases, the “religious” architecture of Las Vegas, the limitless spread of computer networks, all are subject to Taylor’s analysis. Postmodernism, he argues, has given us a new sense of the superficial, one in which the issue is not the absence of meaning but its uncontrollable, ecstatic proliferation.

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Keywords

kritische esthetiek / critical aesthetics , vormgeving / design , postmodernisme / post modernism , identity , body culture

Location

Cabinet 9 - 4: Kunst stromingen en thema's / Art Movements and Themes