Fame

One of the most distinctive cultural phenomena of recent years has been the rise and rise of fame. In this book, Mark Rowlands argues that our obsession with fame has transformed it. Fame was once associated with excellence or achievement in some or other field of endeavour. But today we are obsessed with something that is, in effect, quite different: fame unconnected with any discernible distinction, fame that allows a person to be famous simply for being famous. This book shows why this new fame is simultaneously fascinating and worthless. To understand this new form of fame, Rowlands maintains, we have to engage in an extensive philosophical excavation that takes us back to a dispute that began in ancient Greece between Plato and Protagoras, and was carried on in a remarkable philosophical experiment that began in eighteenth-century France. Somewhat like contestants on a reality TV show, today we find ourselves, unwittingly, playing out the consequences of this experiment.

ISBN 1844651576   Volumes 1 ISBN13 9781844651573 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 181 Publisher Acumen Publishing Ltd   Published in Durham Imprint Acumen Publishing Ltd   Series ISSN 7 Format Paperback   Series title Art of Living Publication date 20 Aug 2008   Height (mm) 216 Library of Congress B105   Width (mm) 138 DEWEY 306.4   Spine width (mm) 10 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level General Pages 160

1		Girls gone wild: fame and vfame		1
2		Footnotes to Plato		27
3		The Enlightenment project		45
4		Lightness and weight		59
5		From suicide bombres to Young Hot Hollywood		77
6		Paris Hilton and the end of history		91
		Further reading		115
		References		117
		Index		119

"accessibly written, with straightforwardly laid out pathways and clearly marked turns of direction ... it offers a persuasive account of the leading characteristics of contemporary fame, or rather its degenerate variant. Best of all, the book is refreshing in its analysis, bringing something different and new to the diagnosis of the production and consumption of contemporary fame. It is in this respect, most of all, that it should be applauded." - European Journal of Communication

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