What do professional wrestling, Pot Noodle and Feng Shui have in common? Well, not much - but they all appear in this book. Critic and cultural philosopher Peter Trifonas and art historian Effie Balomenos explore the curious concept of good - and bad - taste. At once an absurd and yet entirely everyday concept, taste defines us. Our choices, from the most personal (our friends or lovers) to the most general (our politics), are all partly dependent on it. But where does taste come from? Is there a true standard of taste? Are we slaves to the cruel whims of fashion? Who's in control? Good Taste is an enthralling exploration of the cultural history of an idea. In this enticing book - divided into chapters exploring cultural artefacts of absolutely all kinds - Trifonas and Balomenos warn: you are what you choose! Highlights include: TV chefs * Ozzy Osbourne and Reality TV * The 70s fashion conspiracy * Disney * Madonna * Lamborghini * The history of cleavage * High heels * Elvis * Body piercing * Hip-hop * Oprah Winfrey * Ageing rock bands * Turn-ups * Harry Potter * Fake tans and much, much more ...

Good Taste: How What You Choose Defines Who You Are

Trifonas, Peter

Balomenos, Effie

Self-Help

PostTexte

Roland Barthes, a leading exponent of semiology in literary and cultural theory, became notorious for his announcement of 'The Death of the Author' in 1968. 
"Barthes and the Empire of Signs" follows him in exploring the nature of 'representation' itself. Is it possible to reconcile appearance and reality? Or imaginitive recreation and fact? How do we understand the meaning of the world we experience around us? And what does this imply about the reading and writing of culture and its 'empire of signs'? 
Barthes' fictive rendering of 'Japan' through its surface of signs marks a crucial shift in his work away from the Western obsession with meaning regarding the social and historical contingency of signs. And, in turn, this move from linguistic semiology to culture as an 'empire of signs' has encouraged a broader critical inquiry into the fields of mass media and popular culture. 
This book is a welcome, concise introduction to the significance of Barthes' semiological theory in contemporary criticism.

Barthes and the Empire of Signs (Postmodern Encounters)

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Icon,Totem Books

Umberto Eco is popularly known for his best-selling novel, The Name of the Rose. This was a quintessential postmodernist fiction devised by an Italian professor of semiotics, an academic versed in medieval philosophy and linguistics but equally at ease with writing mass media journalism. Eco, football fan and Sherlock Holmes of semiotics, blurs the boundaries between ‘low’ and ‘high’ cultures. Eco is a public intellectual engaged in reading the practices of everyday life. Football for him is a metaphor, a motif and a vehicle for interpreting the nuances and excesses of our human fascination with ideals – ideals that are mobilised by culture into obsessions with sports celebrities. Football is more than a game – it is a sign system that codes experience and gives it meaning on a number of levels. It allows the spectator to read life with the help of the media apparatuses that direct and control our viewing experiences. "Umberto Eco and Football" engages with Eco the cultural critic as he meanders through the signs of culture with a keen and witty eye for the forgotten details of life’s great text, its serendipities, its misreadings.

Umberto Eco and Football (Postmodern Encounters)

Icon Books

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Books by Trifonas, Peter