Hiding (Volume 1996)

by Mark C. Taylor

The age of information, media, and virtuality is transforming every aspect of human experience. Questions that have long haunted the philosophical imagination are becoming urgent practical Where does the natural end and the artificial begin? Is there a difference between the material and the immaterial? In his new work, Mark C. Taylor extends his ongoing investigation of postmodern worlds by critically examining a wide range of contemporary cultural practices.

Nothing defines postmodernism so well as its refusal of depth, its emphasis on appearance and spectacle, its tendency to collapse a three-dimensional world in which image and reality are distinct into a two-dimensional world in which they merge. The postmodern world, Taylor argues, is a world of surfaces, and the postmodern condition is one of profound superficiality.

For many cultural commentators, postmodernism's inescapable play of surfaces is cause for despair. Taylor, on the other hand, shows that the disappearance of depth in postmodern culture is actually a liberation repleat with creative possibilities. Taylor introduces readers to a popular culture in which detectives—the postmodern heroes of Paul Auster and Dennis Potter—lift surfaces only to find more surfaces, and in which fashion advertising plays transparency against hiding. Taylor looks at the contemporary preoccupation with body piercing and tattooing, and asks whether these practices actually reveal or conceal. Phrenology and skin diseases, the "religious" architecture of Las Vegas, the limitless spread of computer networks—all are brought within the scope of Taylor's brilliant analysis. Postmodernism, he shows, has given us a new sense of the superficial, one in which the issue is not the absence of meaning but its uncontrollable, ecstatic proliferation.

Embodying the very tendencies it analyzes, Hiding is unique. Conceived and developed with well-known designers Michael Rock and Susan Sellars, this work transgresses the boundary that customarily separates graphic design from the story within a text. The product of nearly three decades of reflection and writing, Hiding opens a window on contemporary culture. To follow the remarkable course Taylor charts is to see both our present and past differently and to encounter a future as disorienting as it is alluring.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Religion

360 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Mark C. Taylor, Ph.D. (Religious Studies, Harvard University, 1973; B.A., Wesleyan University, 1968), is a philosopher of religion who chaired the Department of Religion at Columbia University 2007–2015. Previously, he was Cluett Professor of Humanities at Williams College (Williamstown, Massachusetts), where he began his teaching career in 1973.

Reviews

[surfurbian · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was written in the early days of virtual reality. I read it 20 years later. So we are kinda over it now.

Theory is heady business and I guess I shouldn't be too hard on these folks but dayumm y'all really stretch things a bit. That whole thing on Luxor in Vegas? I am a character in the movie? The line between the real and the virtual blurred? Since about 7 years of age my brain has been able to distinguish between the real and the imaginary. Yeah, yeah, yeah I get your point. It's not quite a painting or a sculpture or a scene in movie. There is some interaction there but there is a difference between the real and the virtual and, like porn, we know it when we see it. At least in the examples cited (sited) in this text.

It a way it reminds of reading Vers un Architectur. Can't help be be struck by how terribly naive the propositions and conclusions were.

The most engaging portion of this text was Taylor's description of his mother's death and his father's natural decline of age. A bit here on disappearing/appearing but seemed fairly tangential to the text for the most part. And yet as I reflect I think somehow it comes closer to the heart of the matter.

Also liked the bit on Tattooing. Interesting stuff there on ritual, surface, religion, meaning, etc

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read maybe half, maybe two-thirds of this book for my senior thesis and was absolutely blown away. There is a fascinating merging of imagination, inquiry, indecision, honesty, images, and confusion and I was pulled in immediately. I didn't know what I was getting myself into as I picked up a neon pink unquestionably literary and philosophical work and didn't know what I had read when I emerged, but I know that the encounter was incredible. I'm shocked I haven't returned to it to finish what I started but I have the feeling that it can't really finish being read anyway...

[Wendy Crittenden · Rating 4 out of 5]

i haven't read the whole thing, just snippets... but i liked what i read. taylor gets a little too heady sometimes, not that that is a bad thing, but not so much in this writing.

[Becky Amann]

Complex inquiry into surface/depth, inside/outside through contemporary art, fashion, architecture...