The authenticity hoax

how we got lost finding ourselves

1st ed.
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Last edited by ImportBot
August 1, 2022 | History

The authenticity hoax

how we got lost finding ourselves

1st ed.
  • 6 Want to read
  • 1 Currently reading

What does it mean to be authentic? For many, the search for the authentic provides a powerful source of meaning in a secular age, allowing a person a unique personal identity in a world that seems alienating and conformist. This demand for authenticity—the honest or the real—is one of the most powerful movements in contemporary life, influencing our moral outlook, political views, and consumer behavior.Yet according to Andrew Potter, when examined closely, our fetish for "authentic" lifestyles or experiences—organic produce and ecotourism, bikram yoga and performance art, the cult of Oprah and the obsession with Obama—is actually a form of exclusionary status seeking. The result, he argues, is modernity's malaise: a competitive, self-absorbed individualism that creates a shallow consumerist society built on stratification and one-upmanship that ultimately erodes genuine relationships and true community.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.

Publish Date
Publisher
HarperCollins
Language
English

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: The Authenticity Hoax
The Authenticity Hoax
2010, HarperCollins
Electronic resource in English
Cover of: The authenticity hoax
The authenticity hoax: how we got lost finding ourselves
2010, HarperCollins
in English - 1st ed.
Cover of: The authenticity hoax
The authenticity hoax: how we got lost finding ourselves
2010, HarperCollins
in English - 1st ed.
Cover of: The Authenticity Hoax
The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves
April 6, 2010, McClelland & Stewart
Hardcover

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Published in
New York, NY

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
306.09/0511
Library of Congress
HM626 .P68 2010, HM626.P68 2010, HM626 .P68 2011

The Physical Object

Pagination
p. cm.

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL24033243M
Internet Archive
authenticityhoax00pott
ISBN 13
9780061251337
LCCN
2009045459
OCLC/WorldCat
419859613, 670476382

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August 1, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
December 26, 2021 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
January 3, 2021 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
July 22, 2019 Edited by MARC Bot remove fake subjects
March 12, 2010 Created by WorkBot work found