In a book full of playful irony and striking insights, the controversial social philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky draws on the history of fashion to demonstrate that the modern cult of appearance and superficiality actually serves the common good. Focusing on clothing, bodily deportment, sex roles, sexual practices, and political rhetoric as forms of "fashion," Lipovetsky bounds across two thousand years of history, showing how the evolution of fashion from an upper-class privilege into a vehicle of popular expression closely follows the rise of democratic values. Whereas Tocqueville feared that mass culture would create passive citizens incapable of political reasoning, Lipovetsky argues that today's mass-produced fashion offers many choices, which in turn enable consumers to become complex individuals within a consolidated, democratically educated society.
Superficiality fosters tolerance among different groups within a society, claims Lipovetsky. To analyze fashion's role in smoothing over social conflict, he abandons class analysis in favor of an inquiry into the symbolism of everyday life and the creation of ephemeral desire. Lipovetsky examines the malaise experienced by people who, because they can fulfill so many desires, lose their sense of identity. His conclusions raise disturbing questions about personal joy and anguish in modern democracy.

The Empire of Fashion

Lipovetsky, Gilles

History

Princeton University Press

In a book full of playful irony and striking insights, the controversial social philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky draws on the history of fashion to demonstrate that the modern cult of appearance and superficiality actually serves the common good. Focusing on clothing, bodily deportment, sex roles, sexual practices, and political rhetoric as forms of "fashion" Lipovetsky bounds across two thousand years of history, showing how the evolution of fashion from an upper-class privilege into a vehicle of popular expression closely follows the rise of democratic values. Whereas Tocqueville feared that mass culture would create passive citizens incapable of political reasoning, Lipovetsky argues that today's mass-produced fashion offers many choices, which in turn enable consumers to become complex individuals within a consolidated, democratically educated society. Superficiality fosters tolerance among different groups within a society, claims Lipovetsky. To analyze fashion's role in smoothing over social conflict, he abandons class analysis in favor of an inquiry into the symbolism of everyday life and the creation of ephemeral desire. Lipovetsky examines the malaise experienced by people who, because they can fulfill so many desires, lose their sense of identity. His conclusions raise disturbing questions about personal joy and anguish in modern democracy.

The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy (New French Thought Series)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Beauty, Grooming, & Style

The term ‘postmodernity’ has been used to describe that historical transformation of the late 20th century when the institutional breaks holding back individual emancipation disintegrated, thereby giving rise to the full expression of individual desires and the quest for self-fulfilment. But there are now signs – argues Gilles Lipovetsky, one of the most original social thinkers in France today – that we’ve entered a new phase of ‘hypermodernity’, characterized by hyper-consumption and the hypermodern individual. 
Hyperconsumption is a consumption which absorbs and integrates more and more spheres of social life and which encourages individuals to consume for their own personal pleasure rather than to enhance their social status. Hypermodernity is a society characterized by movement, fluidity and flexibility, distanced more than ever from the great structuring principles of modernity. And the hypermodern individual, while oriented towards pleasure and hedonism, is also filled with the kind of tension and anxiety that comes from living in a world which has been stripped of tradition and which faces an uncertain future. Individuals are gnawed by anxiety; fear has superimposed itself on their pleasures, and anguish on their liberation. Everything worries and alarms them, and there are no longer any beliefs systems to which they can turn for assurance. These are hypermodern times.

Hypermodern Times

Charles, Sébastien

World

Polity

L’époque contemporaine est celle de la prolifération des écrans. L''aventure a commencé il y a plus d''un siècle avec l''écran originel : celui du cinéma. Au moment où, de la télévision à la vidéo, du micro-ordinateur au téléphone mobile, des caméras de surveillance au réseau de la Toile, on assiste à l''avènement de l''écran global, qu''en est-il de cette nouvelle culture d''écrans? La thèse développée ici est que, loin de signer la mort du 7e art, l''époque du tout-écran enregistre la plus grande mutation jamais connue du cinéma. Non seulement celui-ci se métamorphose en hypercinéma autour de trois figures constitutives (excès, multiplexité, distance), mais il est devenu producteur d''un monde et, partant, d''une vision du monde. Tous les autres écrans (télévision, pub, jeux vidéo, vidéo-clips, Second Life...) sont désormais restructurés par la logique de la starification, de l''hyper-spectacularisation et du divertissement. Et même le rapport au monde et à soi n''y échappe pas. Voici que le cinéma est partout, y compris là où il n''est pas: mode, sport, urbanisme, arts visuels, vidéomania généralisée portent l''empreinte de la ciné-attitude.Faut-il avoir peur de cet âge écranique? Dans ce livre s''exprime une autre approche : celle qui considère que les images des temps hypermodernes ne sont pas synonymes d''appauvrissement de la pensée, du sensible, de l''esthétique. Le film civilisationnel qui se joue, ni scénario catastrophe ni happy end, contraint à forger un modèle inédit d''intelligibilité du cinéma, des écrans, et, plus profondément, de la culture qui vient.

L'Ecran global: Cinéma et culture-médias à l'âge hypermoderne

Serroy, Jean

SEUIL

Le bonheur paradoxal: Essai sur la société d'hyperconsommation

Literature & Fiction

Essays & Correspondence

Фоліо

in8. Broché.  Eraflure superficielle sur plat sup.

L'Empire de l'éphémère: La mode et son destin dans les sociétés modernes

Reference

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Gallimard]

La troisième femme: Permanence et révolution du féminin

Le sacre de l'authenticité

Le nouvel âge du kitsch: Essai sur la civilisation du "trop"

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