Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Exordium Introduction Part I 1. The phenomenology of television 2. The life not ours to live 3. The celebrity and the nobody 4. Being(s) 5. The life of things 6. The essence of ideology; the essence of truth 7. The truth of the commodity 8. Value, publicity, politics 9. Reproduction 10. The gadget 11. Back to the things themselves Part II 12. Methods Concepts of criticism Language is the EL of being Satanic laughter Techniques of writing Vita contemplativa The raccoon trap 13. Celebrity Epic form Celebrity and singularity Innocence Of celebricity, or: toward a phenomenology of Madonna The strange celebrity The Uncandy Candy Candy What percentage of the American population are celebrities? Specters of Spector Excrement and enterprise The dissociating pleasure of things Abstract pleasures Experiences The theory of suffering Advertising The next top model Television and celebrity Politics and humor The visionary Things Listening to Radiohead for the first time, 17 years too late. 14. Television/Gadget It's bicycle repairmanEL Dialectica gizmotica The Trojan horse The personal computer Terror-vision The Joker Gigi Nip/Tuck The Following The Ring House Disjecta membra Dexteri Boogie Nights Man or Muppet The sweatshops of Hollywood Muppetation and mediation Demectomy Action figures Liberal Arts Glee Bunheads Breaking Bad/Elective Affinities 15. Epilogue How I met my mother (French Theory, by Francois Cusset) Bibliography Videography Notes

About the Author

Anthony Curtis Adler is Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Yonsei University’s Underwood International College in South Korea.

Reviews

...Celebricities is a forceful meditation on the tradition of "theory" as such and on the possibility and impossibility of "theory" now.-- "Syndicate"