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.
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"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
About the Author
Mark Rowlands is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami.
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This review is from: Fame (Art of Living (McGill-Queen)) (Paperback)
3.5 starsI have been reading several books in The Art of Living Series published by Acumen and I have to say some of them really fascinate me with the author's insights and lines of arguments. The series aims at confronting a number of issues that are popular in our contemporary culture, issues that are around us all the time but we (as laymen) just do not have the time to think through. When we have the time to think, mostly we are not able (maybe due to a lack of training) to think critically, not to mention proper and intriguing philosophization. This explains why reading Mark Rowland's Fame is interesting and worthwhile. Mark Rowland starts the book with over-attention-seeking girls who would like to sexualize themselves in reality TV shows and then moves to discuss Paris Hilton and David Beckham. This is a brilliant start simply because such types of people are everywhere in our popular culture. Yet, the author doesn't stop there, but discusses and explores what it means to be an individual with a great sense of autonomy and self-realization by going back to Plato and advocacies during Englightenment. The subsequent chapters after the introduction may be frustrating because the author does not actually mention fame (the subject matter of the book) at all, but this is because he needs to build up his arguments step by step and to showcase how mdoern individualism has turned our lives and cultures into meaningless existence. Trust me, it's worth following the arguments and when you reach the final two chapters, you will realize this book on fame really has its own acute angle. As I would expect, a book on such a topic may have a chapter on postmodern culture and another one on psycholanalytic theories (probably over-mentioning Freud or Lacan). However, Mark Rowland gives up these two approaches and suggests that the fame we now have in our contemporary culture is a variant of the fame we used to understand. He calls it 'vfame', a kind of fame that has nothing to do with respect, quality and values. Yet, its construction in mainly on the lack (possible to go back to Lacan's objet petit a in this case) embeded in every one of us. If you want to study popular culture and you're fed up with the academic stuff on postmodernism and psycholanalysis, I would highly recommend this book to you.
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