ABSTRACT
Authenticity has many meanings in social theory. Post-structuralists or radical constructivists regard authenticity as a myth, a specific cultural form of wielding power over the modern subject via self-interpretation or identity formation (e.g. Nassehi 2006:Chap.3). They emphasize that the culturally coded differences between authenticity and inauthenticity reveal authenticity’s contingent nature. The same behavior-be it camouflage, excess, or even insanity-labeled inauthentic in one epoch may be an expression of authenticity in another (Trilling 1972). References to some essence of a truthful stance towards the subject’s inner self, one’s needs, feelings, motives, and so on, are often criticized as false consciousness. Advocates of such a concept of authenticity, the critics say, fall for the ideals of the romantic ethic.
