- 10%

Surface and Depth: The Quest for Legibility in American Culture Revised ed. Edition 9780195313246

Add your review

Original price was: $67.99.Current price is: $61.19.

  • Publisher : Oxford University Press; Revised ed. edition (July 14, 2006)
  • Language : English
  • Binding : Paperback
  • Paperback : 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 : 0195313240
  • ISBN-13 : 9780195313246
  • Weight : 12.3 ounces
  • Dimensions : 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.1 inches
Report Abuse

Original price was: $67.99.Current price is: $61.19.

(-10%)

Add to wishlistAdded to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0
Add to compare

9780195313246 / Surface and Depth: The Quest for Legibility in American Culture Revised ed. Edition

by  Oxford University Press; Revised ed. edition (July 14, 2006)  (Author)

The idea of a common American culture has been in retreat for a generation or more. Arguments emphasizing difference have discredited the grand synthetic studies that marginalized groups and perspectives at odds with the master narrative.

Surface and Depth: The Quest for Legibility in American Culture is a fresh attempt to revitalize an interpretive overview. It seeks to recuperate a central tradition while simultaneously recognizing how much that tradition has occluded. The book focuses on the American zeal for knowing or making accessible. This compulsion has a long history stretching back to Puritan anti-monasticism; to the organization of the landscape into clearly delineated gridwork sections; and to the creation of a national government predicted on popular vigilance. It can be observed in the unmatched American receptivity to the motion pictures and to psychoanalysis: the first a technology of visual surfaces, the second a technique for plumbing interior depths.

Popular literature, especially the Western and the detective story, has reinscribed the cult of legibility. Each genre features a plot that drives through impediments to transparent resolution. Elite literature has adopted a more contradictory stance. The landmarks of the American canon typically embark on journeys of discovery while simultaneously renouncing the possibility of full disclosure (as in Ahab’s doomed pursuit of the “inscrutable” white whale). The notorious modernism of American literature, its precocious attraction to obscurity and multiple meaning, evolved as an effort to block the intrusions of a hegemonic cultural dynamic.

The American passion for knowability has been prolific of casualties. Acts of making visible have always entailed the erasure and invisibility of racial minorities. American society has also routinely trespassed on customary areas of reserve. A nation intolerant of the hidden paradoxically pioneered the legal concept of privacy, but it did so in reaction to its own invasive excesses.

Specification: Surface and Depth: The Quest for Legibility in American Culture Revised ed. Edition 9780195313246

Weight12.3 lbs
Dimensions0.1 × 0.1 × 0.1 in

User Reviews

0.0 out of 5
0
0
0
0
0
Write a review

There are no reviews yet.

Be the first to review “Surface and Depth: The Quest for Legibility in American Culture Revised ed. Edition 9780195313246”

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Loading...

Vendor Information

Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0
Add to compare
AWHONNs High Risk & Critical Care Obstetrics
Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0
Add to compare
Original price was: $137.26.Current price is: $80.74.
41%
Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0
Add to compare
Data Analysis Fundamentals Certificate 1st Edition 9781119696636
Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0
Add to compare
Original price was: $498.95.Current price is: $369.00.
26%
Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0
Add to compare
The Heidi Heckelbeck Collection #2 (Boxed Set): Heidi Heckelbeck Gets Glasses; Heidi Heckelbeck and the Secret Admirer; Heidi Heckelbeck Is Ready to Dance!; Heidi Heckelbeck Goes to Camp! Paperback – June 7, 2016 9781481463317
Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0
Add to compare
Original price was: $27.99.Current price is: $15.82.
43%
Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0
Add to compare
Design Thinking: New Product Development Essentials from the PDMA ISBN-13: 9781118971802
Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0
Add to compare
Original price was: $59.95.Current price is: $36.68.
39%
Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0
Add to compare
Assessing the Achievement of J. M. Synge (Contributions in Drama and Theatre Studies) 9780274954391
Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0
Add to compare
Original price was: $95.00.Current price is: $85.50.
10%
Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0
Add to compare
Arkansas (Enduring Editions) ISBN-13: 9780807878460
Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0
Add to compare

Product Enquiry

Surface and Depth: The Quest for Legibility in American Culture Revised ed. Edition 9780195313246
Surface and Depth: The Quest for Legibility in American Culture Revised ed. Edition 9780195313246

Original price was: $67.99.Current price is: $61.19.

Adobooks Marketplace | Affordable Textbooks Online – Buy and Sell College Textbooks
Logo
Compare items
  • Total (0)
Compare
0
Shopping cart