Research Catalog

Title

The authenticity hoax : how we got lost finding ourselves / Andrew Potter.

Author

Potter, Andrew

Publication

[New York] : Harper/HarperCollins, c2010.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

296 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

Weaving together threads of pop culture, history, and philosophy, The Authenticity Hoax reveals how our misguided pursuit of the authentic exacerbates the artificiality of contemporary life that we decry. Potter traces the origins of the authenticity ideal from its roots in the eighteenth century through its adoption by the 1960s counterculture to its centrality in twenty-first-century moral life. He shows how this ideal is manifested through our culture, from the political fates of Sarah Palin and John Edwards to Damien Hirst and his role in contemporary art, from the phenomenon of retirement as a second adolescence to the indignation over James Frey's memoir. From this defiant, brilliant critique, Potter offers a way forward to a meaningful individualism that makes peace with the modern world.

Subject

• Social evolution
• Mass society
• Authenticity (Philosophy)
• Identity (Psychology)
• Cultural Evolution

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Malaise of modernity -- False return -- Creative self -- Conspicuous Authenticity -- Perils of transparency -- Vote for me, I'm authentic -- Culture is for tourists -- End of history.

ISBN

• 006125133X
• 9780061251337

LCCN

^^2009045459

OCLC

• 419859613
• SCSB-12349728

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library