16th
While the liberal project of toleration and the postmodern emphasis on diverse perspective still pervade our national consciousness, perhaps with more urgency than before, we aspire to reclaim a unity of purpose that would fulfill the promises of our national myth … America seeks not only to absorb the authenticity of its constituent communities but also to achieve its own internal authenticity. As Lionel Trilling reminds us in the context of artistic culture, the quest for authenticity is an inherently powerful and even violent project, requiring an extreme exercise of personal will to overcome the sentiment of nonbeing.
- Susan Scafidi, Who Owns Culture?
I think the question most often asked regarding this statement (by myself included) is, who is doing the authenticating or assigning the authentic? Mythmaking, self-making, bringing into being the identity of a community in my experience and opinion is more often than not either a goal or self-assigned task of the powerful. It is the means by which sides may be cast, history rewritten. The RSS and BJP in India are excellent examples. In their cases, the violence is more literal than figurative - making external the internal processes.
What got me about that quote was that she said this quest for authenticity requires an extreme exercise of personal will. That somehow rings true to me even though authenticity and effort are sort of contradictory. That it makes sense to me means that it’s not authenticity that we’re after. When we say authenticity, we’re talking about something else. What is that something else? Because it sometimes helps start wars.
