Authentic Artifice; Cultures of the Real

The object of this book is to query some of the premises in our perceptual distinctions between the real and the artificial. It opens up discussion through a medley of scenarios which present us with simulated realities and acknowledged fakes which nonetheless betray signs of genuine substance. Inseparable from the differentiation between the genuine and the fake are claims of authenticity: assertions of who and what is real; where reality is; when things were real in the past, are real in the present, or will be real in the future; why some things are real and others are not, or why some are more real than others; and how it is that those things which are real are real in the first place. This book explores these issues through three distinct themes: • The author as a codifier of the meanings of the real within the constructive framework of a sign-system • The self-reflexive construction of the authentic subject: a person knowingly adopting a manner, mode or performance which is accepted to be, or contributes to defining what is considered to be, real • The discursive representation of objects which are constructed as being real Drawing on a range of cultures - histories, artefacts and ways of life from ceramic wall plaques to self-help manuals, from tourism in Spain to hip-hop in the US - this book examines the establishment and re-appropriation of authenticity and the celebration and refusal of the inauthentic