I have been following the recent authenticity discussion. I am replying to
Lubna Nadvi discussion of hegemony and authenticity. It seems to me that
the idea of hegemony relies on an idea of authenticity (ie. there is a false
consciousness determined by a particular complex of power relations and this
is called hegemony, and then there is my illumination of this situation
which is not any of these things), but this is not really what I want to
talk about. My point has to do with the paradoxes of authenticity,
precisely the paradoxes one falls into when trying to get free of it, as if
you could just cast authenticity (or a unified subject, or meaning or
whatever) off like a piece of worn clothing that you did not like any more.
If authenticity is hegemonic in some way, or even if it only harbours a less
pernicious illusion of some sort, and if authenticity were then to be
abandoned for these reasons, would it be because authenticity was no longer
thought true?, or because it is incapable of authentically representing the
actual situation of power configurations (that authenticity is hegemonic as
a specific instance of the power/knowledge complex)? Can authenticity be
ditched in this way without somehow re-invoking it in the process of
ditching it? Is it not a further instance of self-purifying and wanting to
be true to oneself that characterises authenticity, to then want to purify
oneself of the last trace of that great deceiver authenticity, to then be
true to oneself in recognising that one cannot be true to oneself, that
being the authentic truth.
And yet for all this, despite the difficulty it gives you when trying to get
free of it, I quite like the idea of authenticity.
Sebastian Gurciullo