Book Excerpt! Social Appearances: A Philosophy of Display and Prestige, by Barbara Carnevali

Barbara Carnevali’s concept of ‘social aesthetics’ is tremendously powerful, and explains a lot of otherwise baffling phenomena. Carnevali makes me think that the rise of Orban and Trump and the Brexit movement is better understood as a matter of social ‘taste’ than in terms of ideology, or economics, or identity.

~Blake Gopnik, author of Warhol

We continue this week’s Women in Translation Month feature on Social Appearances: A Philosophy of Display and Prestige, by Barbara Carnevali and translated by Zakiya Hanafi, with an excerpt from the books second chapter. In this strikingly original book, Barbara Carnevali offers a philosophical examination of the roles that appearances play in social life.


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