Authenticity: The Cultural History of a Political Concept

Maiken Umbach, Mathew Humphrey

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9783319685656
• eBook ISBN: 9783319685663
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia sociale

Authenticity is everywhere: political leaders invoke the idea to gain our support, advertisers use it to sell their products. But is authenticity a dangerous hoax? What is, and is not, authentic has been hotly debated ever since the concept was invented. Many academics have sought to "unmask" authenticity claims as deceptive. This book takes a different approach. In chapters covering historical and contemporary examples, the authors explore why authenticity, real or imagined, exercises such a powerful hold on our imaginations. The chapters trace how invocations of authenticity borrow from one another, across arenas such as philosophy and theology, encounters with nature, leisure, and mass consumption, political and corporate leadership, left-wing and right-wing ideologies. This cultural history of authenticity is of interest to academic and lay readers alike, who are interested in the significance and history of a concept that shapes how we understand ourselves and the world we live in.

© The Author(s) 2018

Maiken Umbach and Mathew HumphreyAuthenticity: The Cultural History of a Political Concepthttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68566-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Maiken Umbach¹ and Mathew Humphrey²

(1)

Department of History, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

(2)

School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

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.

Keywords

AuthenticityIdeologiesPolitical conceptsSincerityDecontestation

End Abstract

The language of authenticity is everywhere. Authenticity derives from two component parts, both originating in classical Greek : auto—self, and hentes—doer. To be authentic is to identify with, or claim ownership of, a narrative of origins, or a sense of original and unadulterated selfhood. To assert or reclaim authenticity is to reject any force or process that separates or alienates the individual from their true identity , character, or sense of purpose. Objects, too, can be authentic: not only in the sense that they are not ‘fake’, but also because they, like material culture in general, can enable and facilitate access to authentic experience, in particular moments or in shared social imaginaries across long periods of time. As a political concept, authenticity derives its power from its association with the immediacy of experience and the positive connotations of being ‘true to oneself’. In this book, we shall argue that it is, has been, and will continue to be critically important to the political life of the Western world.¹

We see versions of authenticity across history, and this history recurs as the concept is constantly recycled, redefined, and re-appropriated in new ways, to serve a wide variety of ideological purposes. These show little sign of abating: across a variety of discourses, recent years have seen authenticity emerge as one of the most frequent and powerful concepts of our times. At the same time, authenticity is always contested: there will always be voices that claim that what some celebrate as ‘authentic’ is in fact fake, bogus, and frequently pernicious, by helping to entrench or naturalise illegitimate forms of power or privilege.

Authenticity is rarely studied as a political concept.² Let us take three influential recent surveys of political concepts as examples.³ All three dedicate chapters to concepts that are widely acknowledged as critically important to all political discourse: ‘liberty ’ (or ‘freedom ’), ‘justice ’, ‘rights ’, and ‘democracy ’. Some of these authors or editors make the case for the inclusion of other political concepts, too: ‘civil society ’ and ‘victimhood ’ are two examples. Yet not a single one of the 47 substantive chapters across these three books is on authenticity. Why, then, do we insist on the vital importance of this political concept in the face of such widespread, if implicit, opposition? The answer is not only that authenticity matters. It is also, we suggest, that without authenticity, we cannot appreciate the meaning or operation of any of these other political concepts. No political concept operates in isolation. As Freeden has argued, in the real world, political concepts operate in clusters—or what he calls, somewhat controversially, ‘ideologies ’—which we need to decode morphologically. In other words, the meaning of each political concept depends on its relationship to other, neighbouring or competing, concepts.⁴ So, let us take a closer look at the example of liberty , a concept the political import of which is undisputed. Liberty is widely invoked across a range of ideologies , but the answer to the question ‘What is liberty ?’ would differ between supporters of John Stuart Mill , Karl Marx , or National Socialism, to name but a few. Each answer would depend, in part, on the kind of life such ideologies would consider appropriate or desirable for human beings to lead. The question about what kind of human existence is to be ‘liberated’ by the politics of ‘liberty ’ is not incidental to a conceptual history of liberty itself: it is fundamental. In other words: interpretations of liberty are critically dependent upon prior notions of authentic life.

One of our three introductions to political concepts does include a chapter on ‘Human Nature’,⁵ which may point to a similar connection. Human nature is not, however, coterminous with authenticity. As we shall argue in this book, in some instances at least, calls for authenticity may demand that people disassociate from, or transcend, their natural selves or instinctual drives. Such versions of authenticity call for people to embrace new technologies or modes of life that are highly disruptive of established understandings of what it means to live in accord with ‘human nature’, if by that is meant some pre-modern conception of human life. The demand for authenticity is a demand that one live in accordance with one’s ‘true’ or ‘inner’ self, but discovering the best version of this self may require the creation of a ‘new’ man or woman . A demand for authenticity may also be a demand for the particular social, political, and economic conditions necessary to realise a singular conception of authentic life. Or it may involve a demand for the conditions under which each person can find their own pathway to authenticity. There are many ideological varieties of the concept of authenticity, and it is an empirical rather than purely analytical task to discover what forms they take.

Authenticity may be missing from standard anthologies of political concepts, yet it is not an unexplored idea: we merely have to look for such thinking beyond traditional political theory. This is why we have called this study a ‘cultural history’ of a political concept. We find authenticity discussed most extensively in domains that have important but tangential relationships with politics, conventionally understood. This book, therefore, explores authenticity in such domains as theology , aesthetics , philosophy, business studies, economic production and consumption—but always with one eye on the political. We show that each of these spheres interpenetrates with others, as ways of thinking about authenticity are ‘borrowed’ across different historical epochs, and travel between different discourses and practices. Authenticity is constantly rearticulated and recoded as it is employed for new ideological purposes—or indeed to be criticised as a dangerous yet persistent ‘myth ’. Yet, despite repeated exposures as a socially constructed, normatively loaded, and mythic concept, authenticity retains its ideological power . We contend that it is more important to understand why this is, and how it feeds back into the political realm, than to engage in yet another ‘unmasking’ of authenticity claims. The continuing pull of authenticity has been noted by Gerson, who writes that: “there are many ways to succeed in American politics, but most of them involve authenticity.”⁶ He suggests that in modern democracies , voters will often make choices based not on ideological orientation or personal self-interest, but rather on whether those they are being asked to support are seen as authentic in terms of their personality, background, and character traits. The early twenty-first century has seen an intensifying valorisation of authenticity in many spheres of life; the rise of the ‘authenticity politician’, on all sides of the political spectrum is, we shall argue in this book, only one manifestation of this broader trend.

The first half of this book involves a detailed discussion of authenticity in earlier historical periods. Such a long-term perspective is at odds with existing works that treat authenticity as a product of a distinctly modern consciousness, or, indeed, a specific reaction against modernism . Trilling ’s Sincerity and Authenticity makes this temporal claim explicit.⁷ In his view, both ‘sincerity ’ and ‘authenticity’ are versions of the maxim ‘to thine own self be true’,⁸ but they are historically distinct. Sincerity is taken to be the older form, marked by an ineliminable social dimension. The normative demand of sincerity is that we should ‘fit’ our self with the social structure that surrounds us, and act out our place in life ‘sincerely’, i.e., in a way that is predictable to others, and which they in turn can rely upon. The notion of authenticity, in contrast, is seen as a modern invention, foregrounding the connection between outward behaviour and one’s inner, authentic self. Truth to this authentic self is imagined in opposition to alienated social conventions. For the modern individual, the Nietzschean assertion of authentic will may require a “ruthless” act to assert autonomy in the face of a society “schooled” in duty and obedience.⁹

We take issue with such periodisations, on two counts. First, Trilling’s demarcation between the (social) act of pre-modern sincerity and the (a-social) act of modern authenticity fails to take into account that mod...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Nature of Authenticity, and the Authenticity of Nature
• 3. Living in an Inauthentic Society?
• 4. Authentic Leadership
• 5. Authenticity and Consumption
• 6. Conclusion
• Backmatter