For academic types...

May 17, 2007 9:57 AM

I don't believe that authenticity exists in any form. What scholars/philosophers/social critics have argued similiarly? Jameson? Derrida? Deleuze?

I'm coming at this from an academic perspective (anthropology) so I'm really only interested in academic writing/theory/social critique. I'm not the best read student when it comes to the heavy-hitters (i.e., Foucault, Bourdieu, Nietzche etc.) so I really don't know where to begin. And yes, I know the theorists I've listed are radically different thinkers, but I'm really open to anyone as long as his/her writing is academically grounded.

posted by anonymous78 to education (29 comments total)

I don't believe that authenticity exists in any form. What scholars/philosophers/social critics have argued similiarly? Jameson? Derrida? Deleuze?

Context?
posted by hermitosis at 10:01 AM on May 17, 2007

Is this a rehash of the "nothing new under the sun"?
posted by edgeways at 10:03 AM on May 17, 2007

Sartre, however, denies that there is authentic communication
posted by meehawl at 10:07 AM on May 17, 2007

You might look at Adorno's The Jargon of Authenticity.
posted by OmieWise at 10:07 AM on May 17, 2007

Sartre.

It's impossible to get through the text firsthand unless you read philosophers every day (to some extent, it's intentionally dense just to flaunt). I only got through it with a set of very detailed lecture notes that I found online, and that was 200 pages of notes.

But yeah, classic non-constructive existentialism is all about the impossibility of authenticity.
posted by cowbellemoo at 10:08 AM on May 17, 2007

But yeah, classic non-constructive existentialism is all about the impossibility of authenticity.

It's all a big lie, of course.
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:20 AM on May 17, 2007

What sense of authenticity? You might want to read Baudrillard on simulacra (copies without originals).
posted by nasreddin at 10:20 AM on May 17, 2007

(meehawl has filled me with angst)
posted by cowbellemoo at 10:21 AM on May 17, 2007

T.S. Eliot's Tradition and the Individual Talent is a good discussion of artistic influence.
posted by malaprohibita at 10:33 AM on May 17, 2007

You might want to read Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, if you haven't already.
posted by aparrish at 10:38 AM on May 17, 2007

Since you are coming from an anthropological perspective, are you referring to claims of authenticity surrounding cultural traditions? If so, begin with James Clifford. I'll look up specific articles/chapters, but off the top of my head, Writing Culture, The Predicament of Culture, and Routes should prove relevant and helpful.

Following Clifford's citations will lead you to the right passages in the 'heavy-hitters' -- De Certeau, Derrida, Foucault, Bourdieu, and others.
posted by umbú at 11:14 AM on May 17, 2007

It's all a big lie, of course.

His argument was that everything is a big lie. So...yes.
posted by cowbellemoo at 11:20 AM on May 17, 2007

Also, read the brief section of seven gray pages at the beginning of Michael Taussig's Mimesis and Alterity entitled "A Report to the Academy." It takes aim at both essentialist claims and the "invention of tradition" brand of social constructionism.

Then, if that proves relevant, the rest of the book is intriguing as well.
posted by umbú at 11:26 AM on May 17, 2007

Is it possible to narrow down what sort of authenticity you're interested in? Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self is a history of the concept 'authenticity'. In his use it's mostly something along the lines of beeing true to your self. He doesn't deny the existence of authencity like you try to do, but it can probably be useful anyway, allthough quite dry and not very exciting. (His approach is more that this is an idea that is historically formed, but nonetheless part of how we think today and therefore important.)
posted by pica at 11:48 AM on May 17, 2007

Janet Wolff's The Social Production of Art deals with the issue, though my memory of the book is somewhat cloudy.
posted by wemayfreeze at 11:51 AM on May 17, 2007

Could you define what you mean by "authenticity"? I'm having a hard time figuring out what you mean here.

Also, are you trying to say that we're not Keeping It Real?
posted by Greg Nog at 11:54 AM on May 17, 2007

For Sartre (and most of the existentialists), isn't authenticity to be found in our decision(s)-made-in-freedom-and-awareness-of-our-finitude?

I'd suggest starting with Nietzche (unfortunately, I can't recommend a specific work of the top of my head -- but his style is often aphoristic, which makes him a bit easier to thumb-through). Baudrillard is another obvious choice -- he absolutely doesn't believe in the real (or rather, sees the real as just another simulation), and some of his later writings are fairly accessible.

Not so sure about Derrida -- I think he'd find the claim "authenticity doesn't exist" to be too strong of a metaphysical assertion for his taste, and would proceed to deconstruct it. Plus, he's extraordinarily difficult to read well. However, if you wanted to take Derrida-esque approach, one could talk about how the notion of authenticity inherently implies a metaphysics of presence which privileges speech over writing, the signified over the signifier, authorial intent over interpretation, unchanging essence over variable appearance, and so on. You should be able to find numerous examples of this style of critique by googling such terms. If you do feeling like diving into Derrida, I'd recommend his early essays such as "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" from the collection Writing and Difference, in which he takes on Levi-Strauss and structuralist anthropology.

Delueze -- I've (tried to) read quite a bit of Deleuze, but I honestly can't tell you what he'd think about a claim that authenticity doesn't exist. Delueze's thought/writing, IMO, is a rabbit-hole you're likely not come out of for quite some time -- not recommended for an upcoming paper.

If you're short on time, you might check out some of those "philosophers for dummies" type books. Some are actually very good at orienting you just enough to delve deeper into the actual works.
posted by treepour at 12:25 PM on May 17, 2007

I don't believe that authenticity exists in any form.

I think you really need to clarify what you mean by authenticity (and perhaps while you're at it, believe, exists, and form...). The general topic is certainly addressed by many philosophers, but as I say I'm not sure what it even means to say authenticity doesn't exist in any form - do you just mean that the concept is meaningless? If you mean that any form of consciousness is inherently duplicitous, then Sartre would be a good place to turn, but he did differentiate between bad faith and good faith, so it's not as if he dismissed the possibility of progressing toward a deeper understanding of one's self. If you mean because the self is created rather than given, almost any pragmatic or continental thinker is going to be with you (to some extent) there. If you mean that selfhood itself is a pointless concept, then you're really back to Hume, aren't you?

The notion of authenticity is pretty complex & ambiguous among the philosophers who endorse it at all. Off the top of my head only Heidegger's "authentic being-towards-death" is jumping out at me as a proponent of authenticity, and it's in quite a particular context. I'd need more details on what you're thinking to be able to give you useful reading advice.
posted by mdn at 1:44 PM on May 17, 2007

I'll chime in with those who are asking you to clarify "authenticity," and also refer you to (in addition to Baudrillard, Benjamin, and the others) Jameson's "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism".
posted by synecdoche at 2:15 PM on May 17, 2007

Baudrillard.
posted by youarenothere at 2:18 PM on May 17, 2007

Wow. Thanks for all of the text recommendations! To clarify a bit, I want to argue that authenticity doesn't exist at the level of either material culture or experience. I'm looking at travel and tourism so I want to break down the idea of "searching for authenticity" abroad and argue that this is a chimera. Again, I'm coming at this from an anthropological perspective so, for example, the Taussig rec. was great. I hope this helps a bit.

Please, please, please, I'm not interested in either discussing or defending this idea. I just want reading material. Thanks so much!
posted by anonymous78 at 3:29 PM on May 17, 2007

Re-reading these comments, I have to say thank you again. A lot of them look really good - especially Baudrillard, Adorno, and Benjamin. Thanks!
posted by anonymous78 at 3:38 PM on May 17, 2007

See Plato's Allegory of the Cave. I'm just a shadow of myself. How unauthentic is that? Also see Theory of Forms. My idea of me is perfect, although I am a flawed representation of it.

I'd also suggest (if this is truly an acedemic question) looking into the literature of folks who think otherwise. And also the Sensualists versus the Realists. I'm tired of linking. See also: Philosophy 101 at your local community college.

Or visit your local independent bookstore/coffehouse. There's gotta be hundreds of wannabe pseudointellectuals just waiting for you to ask this very question. Look for the most stressed, skinny fella with a bad haircut (like McFly in Back to the Future) and wire-rimmed John Lennon glasses smoking Gaulois or Nat Sherman cigarettes. Bring a sedative because you might spook him.
posted by valentinepig at 3:39 PM on May 17, 2007

Hi, anonymous78. Now that you mentioned that you're interested in critical studies of travel and tourism, I have a couple more books to add:

Dean MacCannell's The Tourist is a Marxist critique of tourist authenticity. It's from the 1970s, so it's dated in certain ways, but is still a good starting point for examining the issue.

Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett's Destination Culture is essential reading on this topic.

Shelly Errington's book The Death of Authentic Primitive Art and Other Tales of Progress is another good book taking apart tourist authenticity.
posted by umbú at 4:46 PM on May 17, 2007

I believe that if you act on the advice you've received here, and find value in it, then you've disproved your own position. Probably best to ignore the lot.
posted by flabdablet at 6:55 PM on May 17, 2007

thanks umbu! this is great. i know of these authors but am happy to have specific recs. thanks again!
posted by anonymous78 at 7:51 PM on May 17, 2007

Ok, I don't mean to overload the thread with recommendations, but my own work centers around this issue, so I've thought about it a lot.

Here are two more important books on the subject:

The Convict and the Colonel by Richard Price

and

Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan by Marilyn Ivy
posted by umbú at 8:10 PM on May 17, 2007

George Ritzer discusses the inauthenticity of the tourist's experience in his The McDonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions (London: SAGE, 1998) [Amazon].
posted by Sonny Jim at 12:52 AM on May 18, 2007

Ivy is great. You might also find Hernandez's Delirio : the fantastic, the demonic, and the reel : the buried history of Nuevo Leon interesting.

Anna Tsing's In the Realm of the Diamond Queen might be good too.

On the ASAO listserve, there is a great exchange posted April 16, 2005 by Rupert Stasch of his exchange with Lawrence Osborne, the author of the New Yorker piece entitled "Strangers in the Forest: Contacting an isolated people--on a guided tour" (published April 18, 2005). Reading the article and the exchange together offers some great insight into how "authentic" tourist experiences are constructed.
posted by carmen at 5:59 AM on May 18, 2007