TY - BOOK ID - 28181282 TI - Hiding AU - Taylor, Mark C. AU - Miles, Jack PY - 1997 SN - 0226791599 PB - Chicago, Ill. University of Chicago Press DB - UniCat KW - 230*705 KW - 230*705 Post-moderne theologie. Postmoderne theologie KW - Post-moderne theologie. Postmoderne theologie KW - Surfaces (Philosophy) KW - Theology. KW - Mark C. Taylor ; foreword by Jack Miles KW - grafisch design KW - postmodernisme KW - piercing KW - tatoeage KW - Rock Michael KW - Sellers Susan KW - theologie KW - religie KW - lichamelijkheid KW - frenologie KW - mode KW - Las Vegas KW - Tschumi Bernard KW - Sherman Cindy KW - Venturi Robert KW - computers KW - nieuwe media KW - netwerken KW - 766.01 KW - Surfaces (Philosophy). KW - Philosophy and psychology of culture KW - Sociology of culture KW - Postmodernism KW - Theology KW - Christian theology KW - Theology, Christian KW - Christianity KW - Religion KW - Philosophy KW - Post-modernism KW - Postmodernism (Philosophy) KW - Arts, Modern KW - Avant-garde (Aesthetics) KW - Modernism (Art) KW - Philosophy, Modern KW - Post-postmodernism KW - Postmodernism. KW - 130.2 KW - 7.01 KW - architectuur KW - cultuurfilosofie KW - dermatologie KW - filosofie KW - grafische vormgeving KW - huid KW - reclamevormgeving UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:28181282 AB - The age of information, media, and virtuality is transforming every aspect of human experience. Questions that have long haunted the philosophical imagination are becoming urgent practical concerns: Where does the natural end and the artificial begin? Is there a difference between the material and the immaterial? In his new work, Mark C. Taylor extends his ongoing investigation of postmodern worlds by critically examining a wide range of contemporary cultural practices.

Nothing defines postmodernism so well as its refusal of depth, its emphasis on appearance and spectacle, its tendency to collapse a three-dimensional world in which image and reality are distinct into a two-dimensional world in which they merge. The postmodern world, Taylor argues, is a world of surfaces, and the postmodern condition is one of profound superficiality.

For many cultural commentators, postmodernisms inescapable play of surfaces is cause for despair. Taylor, on the other hand, shows that the disappearance of depth in postmodern culture is actually a liberation repleat with creative possibilities. Taylor introduces readers to a popular culture in which detectives - the postmodern heroes of Paul Auster and Dennis Potter - lift surfaces only to find more surfaces, and in which fashion advertising plays transparency against hiding. Taylor looks at the contemporary preoccupation with body piercing and tattooing, and asks whether these practices actually reveal or conceal. Phrenology and skin diseases, the "religious" architecture of Las Vegas, the limitless spread of computer networks - all are brought within the scope of Taylor's brilliant analysis. Postmodernism, he shows, 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.

Embodying the very tendencies it analyzes, Hiding is unique. Conceived and developed with well-known designers Michael Rock and Susan Sellars, this work transgresses the boundary that customarily separates graphic design from the story within a text. The product of nearly three decades of reflection and writing, Hiding opens a window on contemporary culture. To follow the remarkable course Taylor charts is to see both our present and past differently and to encounter a future as disorienting as it is alluring. ER -