In "The Mass Ornament", Siegfried Kracauer claims that "An analysis of the simple surface manifestations of an epoch can contribute more to determining its place in the historical process than judgements of the epoch about itself," and that "the very unconscious nature of surface manifestations allows for direct access to an understanding of these conditions."
For Henri Bergson, the surface of the body, the common limit between the internal and the external, is the only portion of space which is both perceived and felt.
Frederic Jameson describes the "new depthlessness" of postmodernism as the repudiation of the "depth model" of hermeneutics.
Some of the depth models repudiated by contemporary theory are:
1. the dialectical one of essence and appearance (along with a whole range of concepts of ideology or false consciousness which tend to accompany it.)
2. the Freudian model of latent and manifest, or of repression;
3. the existential model of authenticity and inauthenticity; and
4. the great semiotic opposition between signifier and signified.
(Postmodernism, p.12)