Authenticity

First-person accounts of madness and of encountering psychiatric services provide
important sociocultural and psychological knowledge about the subjectivity of distress.
The importance of such accounts is often based upon a claim of the authenticity
of personal experience. However, authenticity is a highly heterogeneous concept:
a popular current manifestation of the discourse of authenticity is in positive psychology,
where it is often underpinned by humanist assumptions such as the rational
autonomous self. The post-structuralist critique of humanism challenged such essentialist notions some time ago and has been adopted explicitly by research methodologies such as autoethnography. The purpose of this article is to argue that this tension—between the value of methods such as autoethnography that offer a legitimate
source of knowledge regarding the subjective experience of madness on the one
hand, and the problems with an essentialist conception of the ‘authentic’ self on the
other—can be addressed by the deployment of a reconceptualised form of authenticity
based on Spivak’s (in: Guha and Spivak (eds.) Selected subaltern studies, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 1988) notion of ‘strategic essentialism’, especially when
modified by De Certeau’s (The practice of everyday life, University of California
Press, Los Angeles, 1984) distinction between ‘tactics’ and ‘strategies’. The implications
of this distinction in terms of developing autoethnographies of distress are then
discussed.

Today, individual identities often undergo radical conversions that were thought to be fantastical only decades ago: transformations of race, sex, gender, and more. These transformations are of great interest to the public, as evidenced by the frequent coverage of trans issues and personal transitions of all kinds on television and in popular magazines. Caitlyn Jenner changes from a man into a woman. Rachel Dolezal changes from a white woman to a black one. It is not new that people attempt these renovations of identity – but what is new is the mainstream insistence upon the totality and truth of these transformations. And while race and gender are certainly different matters, the techniques used to signify them in rhetorical contexts are remarkable similar. The growing discourse on these topics indicates that we have perhaps arrived at a " trans-moment " – a cultural impasse with possibilities for new kinds of transformations to occur. This moment calls for a theoretical reconsideration of ethos, how it functions differently now than it has in the past, and how it is successfully communicated in new mediated contexts. Although people who testify to these transformations often posit their new ethos as self-evident, major renovations of personal identity require sophisticated rhetorical performances in order to win the recognition of others.

This article reviews some of the wide-ranging issues and research surrounding authentic materials and authenticity in foreign language learning. After a brief historical overview and a discussion of some of the definitional ambiguities associated with authenticity, the paper goes on to discuss four important areas of concern: i) the gap between authentic and textbook discourse; ii) the English-as-a-world-language debate; iii) authenticity and motivation; iv) text difficulty and task design and their effects on language acquisition. The article concludes by examining some of the reasons behind resistance to change in curriculum and materials design and possible future directions.

Cities have become creative spaces of total consumption, which constantly refuel the theoretical and practical bases of our consumer society. It is a further stage of the “fantasy city” (Hannigan): McDonaldization (Ritzer) and Disneyization (Bryman) have been largely metabolized and so-called “non-lieux” (Augé) have often become the most significant spaces and have helped to build new glocal identities. In such a context, theming – and particularly historical theming – has become a powerful and effective tool, since it gives a robust structure to the multiple and dynamic processes of mingling that characterize our liquid society (Bauman, 2000). Theming merges past and present, culture and leisure, originals and copies, as well as tourism and shopping, and gives an effective framework to this mingling, which is, at the same time, material and immaterial, visual and emotional, sensorial and experiential.
The relationship with the past is particularly interesting. The central archaeological area of Rome has become a sort of theme park, owing to the huge flows of tourists that it receives and the process of Disneyization that it has undergone, though – unlike many other Italian heritage towns, such as Venice and Florence – Rome still preserves a significant local identity and an urban life that goes far beyond tourism. The theming is present in its urban context owing partly to tourism and partly to the usual culturalization of consumption (hotels with Roman names, restaurants with Roman menus, resin souvenirs of the Colosseum, T-shirts with gladiators and legionaries etc.). We can single out the theming even in some of its most iconic places. The area of the Colosseum and forums, together with Via dei Fori Imperiali, which crosses and unites them, appears as an invisible and diffused theme park: a specialized district for leisure and cultural consumption where archaeological heritage acts as an attraction. It is not a leisure space themed to archaeology, but an archaeological space used as a theme park. Legionaries and gladiators for pictures and re-enactors act as living attractions.
Other spaces contribute to this process. Cinecittà, the dream machine of a boundless park, has helped to build the image of Rome and to theme the city. Its studios host film sets, which are at the same time a themed environment, an unusual archaeological site and a place where the myth of Rome is continually reshaped. Though distant from the main archaeological area, these studios are tied to it by an invisible thread, since they play an important role in the definition of its image. Outside the city, but inside its territory, there is also a small themed district formed by a Roman-themed outlet, “Castel Romano,” and an amusement park, “Cinecittà World”, themed to the studios that nurtured the golden age of Italian cinema.
Similarly, north of Rome, near Civitavecchia, where giant cruise ships bring huge tourist flows, a group of businessmen is trying to create “Roma Vetus”, a pharaonic theme park with reconstructions of many Roman monuments. In line with the current trends of experiential and sensory tourism, visitors would be allowed to relax in Roman baths, mint coins and grind grain. Groups of re-enactors would give life to the park, but visitors themselves would be enabled to rent costumes of gladiators, centurions and senators. We are clearly in the world of entertainment, far away from the open-air archaeological museums with their reconstructions and living-history activities. Its creators maintain that “Roma Vetus” will be used at the same time as theme park and a set for films and TV series. This park is probably destined to remain the dream of a minor group of daring speculators, but it clearly represents the dynamics at work in our liquid world.

The ethical debate about neurotechnologies has been largely framed around their effects on authenticity. In this paper, we investigate the concept of authenticity and associated conceptions of the self. We develop a conception of authenticity that eschews problematic essentialist or existentialist views of the self and the assumption that the authentic self transcends socialization. In our view, authenticity is a condition for self-governance and can involve either endorsement or acknowledgment. Revisiting the debate about neurotechnologies, we show why framing the ethical debate in terms of authenticity is unhelpful and argue that these ethical concerns are better understood as concerns about autonomy.

The fast evolution from local agriculture to food industry created a mismatch between the production behind most supermarket products and the food narratives embedded in western cultures. Accessibility to remote or non-seasonal products elonged the supplier chain up to a level were production and consumption are almost disconnected. This gap created an opportunity for companies to create narratives around the products to reinforce branding as a competitive tool, and consumer demand for authenticity urged design to counterbalance that with hyperreal material narratives that are now possible with the current advanced printing technologies. This article identifies four categories of material simulations and examines how they are used as a communication tool. The relationship between brand narratives and product attributes is analysed using Jean Baudrillard’s four stages of simulacrum, and lastly, the relationship between actual and simulated materials is explored using Boris Groys concept of media sincerity.

Authenticity and the body are important issues in contemporary culture, and pop culture and new television series are no exceptions. By culturally, philosophically and ethically examining this important issue, this article discusses how authenticity is constructed through the human face and body. It focuses on some aspects of confessions by the main characters of the Homeland television series. The most important aspects are: how the body and the face are presented in acts of videotaped confession and the suicidal act of confession. This programme clearly shows authenticity as a social convention and a staged act. Depicting and preparing authenticity in a video recording is linked with blackmail in modern society and culture. Another issue considered in the article is how the body can be manipulated by the media and the individual to stage authenticity in a ‘truth tape’.

The relationship between self‐realization, and so what I really wholeheartedly endorse and owe to myself, and morality or what we owe to others is normally thought of as antagonism, or as a pleasant coincidence: only if I am indebted to such relations as my fundamental projects that I care wholeheartedly about does morality have a direct connection to self‐realization. The aim of this article is to argue against this picture. It will be argued that the structure of self‐realization and the caring activity involved commits the person to values that are beyond the object of his wholehearted caring, in a way that might just pave the way to morality.

An ad hoc network is a collection of nodes that do not need to rely on a predefined infrastructure to keep the network connected. Nodes communicate amongst each other using wireless radios and operate by following a peer-to-peer network model. In this article, we propose a multifold node authentication approach for protecting mobile ad hoc networks. The security requirements for protecting data link and network layers are identified and the design criteria for creating secure ad hoc networks using multiple authentication protocols are analysed. Such protocols, which are based on zero-knowledge and challenge-response techniques, are presented through proofs and simulation results.

Postmodern culture, with its fetishization of the mash-up, the pastiche, and the recombinant, mirrors a contemporary vision of subjectivity as performative and protean, and the current emphasis on being oneself—in an environment where to be oneself is often to be an imitation of others—produces a bewildering double-think that achieves exactly the opposite of the expressivist ideal associated with authenticity. Given the uncoupling of self-understanding from the validating structures of religious discipline and social collectivism, how one goes about locating an authentic hub and testing that against any model other than a subjective pathos, is philosophically problematic. And yet, a generation after the Linguistic Turn, the lure of the authentic as an absolute mode of being has not only not diminished, but has reasserted itself as an insistent trope of contemporary lived and aesthetic practice. Taking British fiction since 2000 as its focus, this essay will explore the prevalence an...

Existentialism and Romantic Love investigates the thinking of five existential philosophers (Max Stirner, Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir) to uncover fresh insights about what is wrong with our everyday ideas about romantic loving, why reality often falls short of the ideal, sources of frustrations and disappointments, and possibilities for creating authentically meaningful relationships. For more about the book, click here: http://amzn.com/1137455799 Excerpt available on The Huffington Post: http://huff.to/1Il5hFW -

How can confession help us become more authentic? This article outlines something we can learn from Wittgenstein about this relation.

Full text available online: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/18/opinion/wittgensteins-confession-philosophy.html

Gilbert and colleagues’ study ('I miss being me: Phenomenological effects of Deep Brain Stimulation') adds much needed data on what patients actually experience regarding changes of the self following DBS treatment. Out of the same motivation to gain a better understanding of patients’ experiences, we conducted in-depth interviews with 18 Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder patients on their general experiences (De Haan et al 2013, De Haan et al 2015) and on their experiences regarding personality changes specifically (De Haan et al 2017). We found that most patients felt that they had become more themselves (13) or that they had not changed (4). Only one patient felt less herself. The title of this paper and the terminology of self-estrangement suggests that Gilbert and colleagues found the opposite. Do patients with Parkinson's Disease experience more self-estrangement following DBS than OCD patients?

A closer look at Gilbert et al.'s data, however, reveals a very different picture: the contradictory term ‘restorative self-estrangement’ is used to refer to patients who felt they had become their old selves again. In fact, at least 15 out of 17 patients (88%) either say that they have not changed or that they have become more themselves.

In this comment, I first argue that the authors’ interpretation of their data in terms of ‘self-estrangement’ is misleading.  Secondly, I present findings from our study on two different ways in which patients understood what it means to be ‘changed as a person’; leading to different answers to describe a similar experience. I show how this may shed new light on the data presented here. I end by discussing the clinical relevance of the concepts ‘personal identity’ and ‘authenticity’.

Tourism is one of the major industries worldwide and it is considered a major factor for the economic development of many countries of the south, among them South Africa. Backpacker tourism has been a growing source of income lately in rural, coastal towns of the Transkei. But most of the Backpacker hostels are white owned and often the local people can only profit from the few jobs created as cleaners or tour guides. In the specific place of Coffee Bay, a strong feeling of disempowerment is widespread among young local men.
How is culture represented in these tours and how do the tourist and the local gaze influence it? How are the revenues distributed? How do the tourists try to grasp the unknown and often idealised surroundings?
In my presentation, I would like to talk about the results of this research, but also about methodological problems imposed by the fact that it turned out to be a two-sited research – inside and outside the hostel: Two different social contexts with strong, even spatially expressed boundaries.

This 2nd edition of the internationally acclaimed guide to forensic stable isotope analysis uses real-world examples to bridge discussions of the basic science, instrumentation and analytical techniques underlying forensic isotope profiling and its various technical applications. Case studies describe an array of applications, many of which were developed by the author himself. They include cases in which isotope profiling was used in murder, and drugs-related crime investigations, as well as for pharmaceutical and food authenticity control studies.

Updated with coverage of exciting advances occurring in the field since the publication of the 1st edition, this 2nd edition explores innovative new techniques and applications in forensic isotope profiling, as well as key findings from original research. More than a simple update, though, this edition has been significantly revised in order to address serious problems that can arise from non-comparable and unfit-for-purpose stable isotope data. To that end, Part II has been virtually rewritten with greater emphasis now being placed on important quality control issues in stable isotope analysis in general and forensic stable isotope analysis in particular.

Problem statement: The authenticity of heritage sites, in addition to the form component, is associated with the continuity of social life, various activities and functions. The UNESCO Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) in 2011 sought to establish a link between "urban conservation" and "practical market". It has created a new misunderstanding because the heritage authenticity has encountered issues in the field of tourism that have not necessarily correspond to a deep understanding of the conservation terms. From the tourism industry perspective, authenticity depends on the tourist perception; changes according to consumer demands and economic rather than social dimensions, while from the conservation perspective, it depends on the actual sense of heritage authenticity, avoiding duplication, addition and changes, considering social context and living tradition. Research objective: This paper examines the aspects of conflict caused by tourists as stakeholders in defining heritage authenticity and the presented solution is evaluated in the project of Al-Moez Street in Cairo. Research method: This study deals with heritage authenticity through documentary research and used a variety of sources, including books, articles, statements and research projects. Conclusion: Finally, a sustainable tourism approach with four policies: "carrying capacityˮ, "small-scaleˮ, "government supervisionˮ and "community participationˮ is proposed as a solution and then its use in the restoration project of Al-Moez Street, as a successful project in the field of tourism and conservation principles, has been examined.

Contrary to what Felipe Pedrell indicates, the second Ave maris stella in his Victoria’s collected works (vol. V, 1908, pp. 100-3, n° 33) doesn’t appear in the collection published in 1600 in Madrid by the composer, nor in any other of the musician’s books. In the 1600 edition, Victoria reissues the two first verses (plainchant followed by polyphony) of the Ave maris stella published in 1576 and then again in 1581.
The earliest source of the problematic Ave maris stella is Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Musik-Abteilung, 2 Mus. pr. 23 handschriftlicher Beiband, dating from the third quarter oft he seventeenth century. This source is a manuscrit that runs as an appendix to the 1581 edition of Victoria’s hymns. No attributions are given in the manuscript. The first attributions of the piece to Victoria arise in the nineteenth century, in manuscripts copied by Johann Michael Hauber, Johann Caspar Aiblinger, August Baumgartner and Carl Proske, and preserved in Munich and Regensburg. Proske pubished the piece in his Musica divina in 1859 (Annus primus, vol. III, pp. 419-24). The most probable hypothesis ist that Pedrell had knowledge of the second Ave maris stella, under the spanish composer’s name, via Proske’s Musica divina.
In all likelihood the piece is not by Victoria, not least because the composer has never written odd polyphonic verses of hymns. In his Studies in the Music of Tomás Luis de Victoria (2001), Eugene Casjen Cramer relies on the supposed authenticity of the work to ascribe the others pieces of Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Musik-Abteilung, 2 Mus. pr. 23 handschriftlicher Beiband to the composer. These attributions should therefore be refuted.

Terroir, an expression originally referred to only in viticulture and agriculture, has undergone a broadening of meaning and use in recent years. Formerly, it described primarily viticultural products in specific regions where local geographical features impart special physiological properties making them unique. Today, pressure from the general public and the media requiring detailed information on the origins and production processes of both food and beverage products in the quest for sustainability have resulted in the word “terroir” being used in the description of an increasing number of culinary products with an ever multiplying number of meanings. The concept of terroir has also experienced another transformation as a driver of authenticity for tourism destinations. Terroir and authenticity are intertwined as both are characterized with the idea of “an undisputed origin”. Having an authentic experience has become a prime driver for travellers in choosing destinations around the world. Food, beverage and gastronomy all play a critical role in driving a destination’s authenticity. And the replication of authenticity is difficult to perhaps impossible. By processing and offering local food products cultivated in unique rural regions, restaurateurs, and chefs are in fact creating a terroir renaissance. The interest of travellers in food-, gastronomy-, culinary tourism is on the increase. The literature shows that the concept of terroir is especially crucial in the hospitality and tourism industries where there is an undisputed growth in the awareness of quality products and sustainable food products. Hence, the purpose of this chapter is to investigate the broad spectrum of present day interpretations and perspectives of terroir and discussing its importance in the development of tourist destination as well as providing an authentic experience to travellers.  Food, wine and gastronomy from the French Jura department is presented to demonstrate the links between terroir, food and gastronomy in destination authenticity.

This article discusses the authenticity of the experience of the Holocaust through museum architecture. This issue arose during the writer's visitor research conducted at European Jewish museums with the aim of examining the effect of the spatial design on Holocaust memory construction. From Aristotle and Plato to Benjamin and Heidegger and with the support of psychoanalytic concepts of Freud, Lacan, and Jung, we acknowledge different theories that approach the experiential and existential dimensions of authenticity; pursuing self-discovery and overcoming experiential challenges are the two central axes that will help us identify the different categories of visitors according to the kind of authenticity they quest for and the cause of its necessity. Moreover, the juxtaposition between the Museum and the actual site, such as a concentration camp, apart from raising questions of veracity and representation-which one provides a " real " account of the past?-posits problems of ethics, appropriation, materiality, narrativity, and empathy and, finally, leads to a salient issue: how different is memory from commemoration and which " locus " represents better each one of them; the Museum or the site? Is such a question legitimate?

This research identifies characteristics, which are the Theme, Identity, Functions and Authenticity of some current riverfront developments, mainly focusing in urban areas. The study began with the evolution of an urban riverfront, including under standing how early settlements were established along the rivers, later forming the town, leading to the present day cities and their inherent traditional urban culture value. Case studies selected were from South East Asia within Singapore and Sarawak in Malaysia . These examples will then be compared with London and Boston, USA. Much attention will be given to paying high respect to the cities' character and to acknowledging the historical and cultural background of the city where they are set by scrutinising their characteristics. The conclusion will be systematically analysed on design  elements and careful considerations through design  planning and sensitive approaches.

Thames Town—an English-like village built in Shanghai—is many places at once: a successful tourist destination, an affluent residential cluster, a city of migrant workers, and a ghost town. The Real Fake explores how the users of Thames Town transform a themed space into something more than a “fake place.” Piazzoni understands authenticity as a dynamic relationship between people, places, and meanings that enables urban transformations. She argues that authenticity underlies the social and physical production of space through both top-down and bottom-up dynamics. The systems of moral and aesthetic judgments that people associate with “the authentic” materialize in the village. Authenticity excludes some users as it inhibits access and usage especially to the migrant poor. And yet, ideas of the authentic also encourage everyday, spontaneous appropriations of space that explicitly break the village rules. Most scholars criticize theming, arguing that it produces a fake, exclusionary, and controlling city. Piazzoni complicates this view by focusing on how people negotiate a sense of authenticity in an explicitly “fake” environment. Heritage studies tell us that we authenticate places through affective and embodied experiences, as evidenced by the data collected in Thames Town. Although the exclusionary character of theming remains unquestionable, it is precisely the experience of “fakeness” that allows Thames Tow’s users to develop a sense of place.

This article analyses the Harvest Event, annual celebration of the work of winegrower communities that acquires new meanings as part of the wine tourism calendar of wineries worldwide. It particularly discusses the ritual of grape harvesting and treading performed by tourists during the event that took place in 2017 at Araucária winery. Considering the concepts of authenticity, staged tradition and sensorial experience, it evaluates the relevance of those acts, as perceived by its participants.

Rituals are often used as opportunities for self-reflection and identity construction. The Camino to Santiago de Compostela, which has become a singularly popular pilgrimage since the late ‘80s of the last century, is an example of a ritual that is explicitly used to gain a deeper understanding of one’s identity through distancing oneself from daily life and creating a space of contemplation. Implicit in this function of rituals in general, and the pilgrimage to Santiago in particular, is the assumption that one is more authentic and closer to one’s true identity during the pilgrimage, than one is in daily life. The ritual self, as an idealized identity, functions thus as a critique on one’s regular cultural identity. This critique also plays a role in the construction of a so-called authentic pilgrim identity, which creates a hierarchy in the ways the pilgrim identity can be appropriated by individuals. This presentation proposes to investigate both the ideal, ritual identity and the implicit critique towards the cultural dynamics that force the pilgrim to ‘not be her/himself’ in daily life.

This paper explores Israeli backpackers’ travel narratives, in which a profound self-change is recounted. These tourists are construed as narrators, whose identity stories, in which the powerful experience of self-change is constructed and communicated, are founded on, and rhetorically validated by the unique experiences of authenticity and adventure. The relation between the travel narrative, attesting to an external voyage toward an “authentic” destination, and the self-change narrative, attesting to an internal one, is examined in light of two major discourses in tourism: the semi-religious and the Romanticist. The paper addresses the sociocultural context, that of contemporary Israeli culture, against which the self-change narratives construct a collective notion of identity, and wherein they can be viewed as effective performances.

This article investigates the relationship between biography and authenticity within the aesthetics of grunge musician Kurt Cobain, using the 2002 Riverhead Press volume of his journals as a primary source. Focusing on Cobain's fascination with the human form and with bodily fluids, I argue that his idea of the ‘sick body’ functioned as a central metaphor that shaped his approach to various media (prose, lyrics, drawing and singing) such that there was a homology between these different forms. I draw on excerpts from the Journals to show the meanings that he associated with the ‘sick body’, including the ways in which it indexed his own biography of physical pain and social marginalisation. Using the Nirvana song ‘Hairspray Queen’ as a case study, I then show the interactions between musical and linguistic signs of the sick body and how these interactions reveal Cobain's ideas on music's meaning. Ultimately, I argue that in song lyrics and performance, Cobain prized scat...

"This paper explores the dialectics of authenticity and hybridity – two concepts that tend to be theoretically conceived in terms of mutual exclusion, while fictional texts have for quite some time started to enact them as analogous and compatible ideas. With respect to two recent novels, Richard Powers' The Time of Our Singing and Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude, I would like to show that hybridity these days can very well be employed to elicit an aura of authenticity, rather than conveying ironical distance, subversion or disruptive metafictional self-reflection.
Both novels stem from the realm of what has been called neo-realist fiction and both of them run counter to Jonathan Franzen's diagnosis of a contemporary literary market in which a naïve understanding of cultural identity rules supreme. After all, Powers and Lethem are white authors which capitalize on the subject of race. While both novels trace issues of identity and identification which have their origin in the structures of racial ascriptions and self-fashionings, they give a markedly new and critical slant to the mechanisms of testimonial identity politics which Franzen demarcated, without falling back on long-standing postmodern techniques of ironic distancing and de-authentication.
"

Pulp's so-called working-class anthem "Common People" positions itself in a twofold way towards the concept of authenticity, namely constructing and deconstructing it at the same time. Ths paper examines the different versions of "Common People", including the official music video, two live recordings, and of course the lyrics.

This article compares responses to travel writing and imaginative fiction about the settler colonies, in particular Australia and New Zealand, between 1870 and 1945—a time when distinctions between travel, mobility, and emigration were hard to pin down. Very little scholarship has shown an interest in what the subject society’s inhabitants thought of its portrayal, and what this can tell us about colonial and national identities. Australasian responses to works about Australasia, in the form of published reviews, were influenced by the knowledge and particular concerns of the reviewer and their own negotiations with identity. What mattered to readers and critics was the authenticity of the portrayal of the place, but this was not only related to whether the work claimed to be fiction or non-fiction. The perceived level of familiarity that the writer had with the area was the most important factor in determining whether the reception of a work was positive or negative.