Is authenticity an outdated ideal in the age of the profile?
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This video lecture is part of the Identity and Selfhood course on Substack. You can find the reading list here. Links to readings and access to the full lectures as video and audio are provided to subscribers, with low-income and student learner discounts available on my homepage.
In periods of technological upheaval, it’s common to grasp at ideals from the past to ground us. However, these ideals don’t always reflect the new material realities of the present. According to contemporary philosophers Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul D’Ambrosio, authenticity is one such ideal that is now past its expiration date. Instead of heeding calls to find your AUTHENTIC self, they suggest that we’re witnessing the rise of a new lodestar: PROFILICITY. Profilicity doesn’t just refer to your social media profiles - though they’re part of it, and their rise is part of the emergence of profilicity - but rather to the regime of the self that is seen as being seen.
Their 2021 book You and Your Profile: Identity After Authenticity explores how profilicity is superseding authenticity (as well as sincerity before it), and what ramifications that has for our identities and senses of self. Buckle up and enjoy our final reading for the course, one you’re sure to have strong feelings about given its relevance to the present day!
As you’re doing the reading and watching the lecture video (or listening - see audio below!), consider:
Where and how do you hear appeals to authenticity in daily life? How do these appeals strike you?
What do you think of Moeller and D’Ambrosio’s contention that authenticity is paradoxical, because it calls for originality but offers models of originality for you to follow?
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