THE AUTHENTICITY HOAX

Ottawa Citizen politics editor Potter (co-author: Nation of Rebels: How Non-Conformity Drives Our Consumer Society, 2004) argues that the widespread quest for “authenticity” simply exacerbates our discontent with modern life.

A journalist with a doctorate in philosophy, the author writes with authority about the ways in which today’s men and women seek authenticity, or meaning, in their lives—loft-living, ecotourism, yoga, the slow-food movement, etc. Dissatisfied with a world dominated by the fake, the prepackaged and the artificial, they seek “the honest, the natural, the real, the authentic.” But the quest is a hoax, writes Potter. There is no such thing as authenticity, any more than there is an authenticity detector that you could wave at something. Our search for authenticity is a response to the malaise of modernity. Emerging between 1500 and 1800, the worldview of modernity swept away traditional sources of meaning on a tide of secularism, liberalism and the market economy, leaving people with profoundly changed attitudes toward science, religion and personal identity. Potter draws nicely on the writings of Lionel Trilling, on philosophical thought from Rousseau to Diderot and on elements of popular culture from the singer Avril Lavigne to the TV program The Office. He shows how alienation from the ever-changing modern world has prompted several centuries of “rainbow-chasing” after authentic living that is often simply nostalgia for a nonexistent past or disguised status-seeking. For example, the case against suburban living “is little more than lifestyle snobbery disguised as a quest for authenticity.” Potter’s anecdote-filled book explores such topics as art forgery, plagiarism, organic living, fake memoirs, politics and Oprah Winfrey’s “cult of authenticity through therapeutic self-disclosure, of the sort promoted by her frequent guest Dr. Phil.” The author’s discussions of authenticity as a strategy for marketing “vintage” jeans and other goods and as a way of promoting an undiluted cultural past to tourists are especially rewarding. How to avoid the authenticity hoax? Potter writes that we must pursue forms of individualism that make peace with the modern world, with all its benefits and losses.

A provocative meditation on the way we live now.