The Art of Self Invention Image and Identity in Popular Visual Culture

by Finkelstein, Joanne

• ISBN13: 9781845113957
• ISBN10: 1845113950
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-11-15
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris

Summary

Both an exploration of the ways in which we fashion our public identity and a manual of modern sociability, this lively and readable book explores the techniques we use to present ourselves to the world: body language, tone of voice, manners, demeanor, "personality" and personal style. Drawing on historical commentators from Castiglione to Machiavelli, and from Marcel Mauss to Roland Barthes, Joanne Finkelstein also looks to popular visual culture, including Hollywood film and makeover TV, to show how it provides blueprints for the successful construction of "persona". Finkelstein's interest here is not in the veracity of the self recently dissected by critical theory but rather in the ways in which we style this "self", in the enduring appeal of the "new you" and in our fascination with deception, fraudulent personalities and impostors. She also discusses the role of fashion and of status symbols and how advertising sells these to us in our never ending quest for social mobility.

Author Biography

Joanne Finkelstein is Professor and Executive Dean, Faculty of Arts, Ed. & HD, Victoria University, Australia.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Hollywood Stories	p. 1
The Art of Self-Invention	p. 3
The Visual World	p. 6
Faux Identity	p. 7
Self-Fashioning	p. 11
The Popularity of Disguise	p. 14
Love for Sale	p. 18
Life Imitates Art	p. 22
The Following Chapters	p. 26
Self-Invention	p. 39
The Impostor, Trickster and Spy	p. 41
Martin Guerre	p. 41
Agnes	p. 50
Anthony Blunt as Victor Maskell	p. 61
Appearances Matter	p. 67
Everyone Lies	p. 68
Manners	p. 75
The Welcome Guest	p. 76
Rules of the Game	p. 81
History of Manners	p. 85
Antique Cool	p. 89
Deception and Invention	p. 92
The Modern Subject	p. 96
On Being Calculating	p. 99
The Science of the Self	p. 104
Society as Surface	p. 107
Playing the Game	p. 113
Looking Good	p. 119
Identity	p. 121
Status Symbols	p. 121
Looking Good	p. 122
Coded Identity	p. 126
Finding the Subject	p. 130
Self as Surplus	p. 135
The Irresistible Allure of Identity	p. 138
Advertising	p. 147
The Advertising Industry	p. 147
The Unnatural World	p. 148
The Afterglow of Advertising	p. 155
Subjectivity on Sale	p. 158
Searching for the Self	p. 165
Lives Gone Wrong	p. 172
Looking	p. 179
Fashion	p. 187
The Eye of the Beholder	p. 187
The Fashioned Self	p. 191
The Mind's Eye	p. 196
Being Conspicuous	p. 201
The Depths of Fashion	p. 205
The Ethics of Appearance	p. 211
Afterword	p. 219
Visual Culture	p. 219
Self-Invention	p. 222
Bibliography	p. 231
Index	p. 247
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