Confronting Inauthenticity – Utopias of David Bowie

Bowie consists of twenty-one short chapters that function as a collection of conceptual fragments. Bowie's artistic work already provides a series of different periods each with its own stock of identities which could easily be comprised into different sections of this book according to, as Critchley calls them, illusions he inhabited, both musically and aesthetically. Although a sense of linearity is present, as the author tends to give an overview of albums and his own fan sensibilities, dividing the book according to Bowie's own artistic eras is avoided. The division into twenty-one chapters is much closer to breaking Bowie's work into conceptual categories that are present throughout his career and are related to questions of identity, sexuality and desire or sometimes even Bowie's own life in the background of it all. Still, as the author notes at the very beginning of the book – it is important not to conflate Bowie as a persona of popular music with his work. It is a popular approach in music journalism and production of music biographies to somehow look behind the performance in search of traumas that might have provoked an artist to perform in a specific mode. This is in its own a desire of authenticity always present with popular music that Critchley seeks to deconstruct in order to give more layers to Bowie's music, or as he is approaching it – poetry