Laying Claim to Authenticity: Five Anthropological Dilemmas

The introduction to this special collection examines five dilemmas about

the use of the concept of authenticity in anthropological analysis. These

relate to 1) the expectation of a singular authenticity “deep” in oneself or

beyond the surface of social reality, 2) the contradictions emerging from

the opposition of authenticity with inauthenticity, 3) the irony of the notion

of invention of tradition (which deconstructs, but also offends), 4) the criteria

involved in the authentication of the age of objects (with a consideration

of their materiality), and 5) authenticity’s simultaneity, its contemporaneous

multiple conceptualizations in context. I argue for a perspective on the

study of authenticity that acknowledges the simultaneous co-existence of

more than one parallel manifestation of authenticity in any given negotiation

of the authentic.