Abstract
We argue that authenticity needs to be understood as a political concept in its own right, which in turn shapes the meaning of adjacent key concepts such as freedom and justice. Authenticity is deeply implicated in the language of politics, but to explain its significance, we have to look at discourses beyond politics itself, to theology, aesthetics, philosophy, business, and consumer behaviour. Definitions of authenticity are constantly borrowed and adapted, across historical epochs, between opposing political ideologies, and between high culture and popular usage. For every claim to authenticity there emerges a parallel argument debunking it as a myth or mask for illegitimate power. We suggest that such arguments substitute their own authenticity claims, rather than dispensing with the idea completely.
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Notes
- 1.
We do not argue that there is a singular ‘Western’ understanding of authenticity: there are significant cultural differences, as well as connections, in the understanding and operation of authenticity within this sphere. Where possible, we have also reflected on how such understandings were informed by, or imagined, non-Western Others. Yet a full-scale global history, which would give equal weight to authenticity in non-Western contexts, such as China or the Indian subcontinent, is beyond the scope of this book: we therefore confine our study to broadly Judeo-Christian cultural contexts, from the early modern period to the present.
- 2.
With some exceptions, of course: see M. Berman (2009) The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society, New Edition (London: Verso) [1970]; D. Rossinow (1999) The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America (New York: Columbia University Press).
- 3.
R. Bellamy and A. Mason (eds) (2010) Political Concepts (Manchester: Manchester University Press); I. MacKenzie (ed.) (2005) Political Concepts: A Reader and Guide (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press); J. Hoffman and P. Graham (2006) Introduction to Political Concepts (Harlow: Pearson Education).
- 4.
M. Freeden (1996) Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press). See also: C. Geertz, ‘Ideology as a Cultural System’, in D. E. Apter (ed.) (1964) Ideology and Discontent (New York: Free Press). We concur with Freeden’s view that ideologies are best understood as structured arrangements of political concepts, although we do not analyse ideologies per se here.
- 5.
C. J. Berry (2005) ‘Human Nature’ in I. MacKenzie, Political Concepts, 404–32.
- 6.
M. Gerson (2014) ‘The Power of Authenticity’, Washington Post, 26/6/14 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-the-power-of-authenticity-in-politics/2014/06/26/12d4e9f8-fd5d-11e3-b1f4-8e77c632c07b_story.html?utm_term=.675559030d21 (accessed 25/07/2017).
- 7.
L. Trilling (1971) Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press).
- 8.
The words uttered by Polonius to his son Laertes in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
- 9.
Trilling , Sincerity and Authenticity, 131.
- 10.
See R. Handler (1986) ‘Authenticity’, Anthropology Today, 2(1): 2–4, which draws on Trilling when discussing authentic nationalism , but does not comment on the fact that Trilling’s sincerity /authenticity dichotomy effectively dissolves in the face of modern , collective forms of authentic being.
- 11.
G. H. Penny (2006) ‘Elusive Authenticity: the Quest for the Authentic Indian in German Public Culture’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 48(4), 798–819.
- 12.
See, for example, W. Cronon (1995) ‘The Trouble with Wilderness: Getting Back to the Wrong Nature’ in W. Cronon (ed.), Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York: W. W. Norton & Co.), 69–90.
- 13.
T. W. Adorno (1964) Jargon der Eigentlichkeit. Zur deutschen Ideologie (Frankfurt/M: Surkamp), English translation by K. Tarnowski and F. Will (1973) The Jargon of Authencitiy (Evanston: Northwestern University Press).
- 14.
T. W. Adorno (1949) Philosophie der neuen Musik, quoted from S. Knaller and H. Müller (2010) ‘Authentisch/Authentizität’, in K. Barck et al. (eds), Ästhetische Grundbegriffe, vol. 7, Supplemente, 40–65 (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler), 56.
- 15.
For some reflections on this, see G. Sartori (1970) ‘Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics’, American Political Science Review, LXIV (4), 1033–53.
- 16.
Berman , too, uses “the word ‘authenticity’ to designate a whole family of aspirations and ideals which are central to the cultural life of our age. But my choice of the word was rather arbitrary; so many others might have done as well. ‘Identity ’, ‘autonomy’, ‘individuality’, ‘self-development’, ‘self-realization’, ‘your own thing’: our vocabulary overflows with expressions which express a persistent and intense concern with being oneself.” M. Berman , The Politics of Authenticity, xxiii. Berman’s own language of and synonyms for authenticity are as rooted in time and place as any other, in this case the New York of the late 1960s and the rise of the counter-culture and the New Left.
- 17.
Freeden , Ideologies.
- 18.
See for example: F. Nietzsche (2003) Beyond Good and Evil (London: Penguin) [1886]; M. Heidegger (1962) Being and Time (Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell) [1927]; J.-P. Sartre (1956) Being and Nothingness (New York: Pocket Books) [1943]; S. de Beauvoir (2010) The Second Sex (London: Vintage) [1949]. For a discussion of Nietzsche and authenticity, see J. Golomb (1990) ‘Nietzsche on Authenticity’, Philosophy Today, 34(3), 24–58. For de Beauvoir, C. B. Radford (1965) ‘The Authenticity of Simone de Beauvoir’, Nottingham French Studies, 4(2), 91–104.
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Umbach, M., Humphrey, M. (2018). Introduction. In: Authenticity: The Cultural History of a Political Concept. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68566-3_1
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