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Cultural Passions
Fans, Aesthetes and Tarot Readers
Cultural Passions
Fans, Aesthetes and Tarot Readers
Description
Elizabeth Wilson is one of our most radical cultural critics. In "Cultural Passions" she transcends the division between 'high' and 'low' culture, exploring the emotional commitment people bring to the books, performances, objects and rituals in which they find meaning and challenging an enduring suspicion of the pleasure of the aesthetic. Ranging from Marcel Proust to tarot readings, from urban planning to interiors, Elizabeth Wilson investigates an underlying Puritanism in critical commentary on matters as wide ranging as Roger Federer and C S Lewis, Surrealism and fashion and the relationship of religion to fan culture. She questions why pleasure appears suspect, even as consumer society incites it and turns life into entertainment. She questions why there is such fear of elitism when at the same time the fans of mass culture are held in contempt. Subverting conventional views, her oblique point of view provides startling insights on both familiar and marginal cultural experiences.
Table of Contents
Part One: Cultural Diseases
1 Introduction
2 Pleasure's Dangers
3 Looking Backward: Nostalgia Mode
Part Two: Fashion
4 Magic Fashion
5 Glamour: The Secret Behind the Sheen
6 Dressed to Kill,
7 The Vicissitudes of Camouflage
8 Fashion and Memory
9 Urbane Fashion
Part Three: The Future We Have Lost
10 Austerity in Retrospect: the Glamour of Masochism
11 Postwar Perverts
12 Bethnal Green
Part Four: Magic Moments
13 Modern Magic
14 'Disorientated Agnosticism': Reading the Tarot
15 Secret Worlds
16 Temporary Gods
17 Conclusion
Epilogue
Notes
Index
Product details
| Published | Jun 30 2013 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (PDF) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 232 |
| ISBN | 9780857722188 |
| Imprint | I.B. Tauris |
| Illustrations | 14 integrated bw |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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