Chapters in this book

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