| |  | | Introducing Our New Fall Issue: Authenticity | We are happy to announce that the newest issue, "Authenticity," is in the mail and online. This fall, we're investigating how the modern ideal of authenticity mesmerizes, motivates, and weighs down our most significant cultural projects and our deepest understandings of ourselves. | |  | "Perhaps the shrewdest account of the rise of this ideal," writes editor Jay Tolson, "was provided by the literary critic Lionel Trilling in his 1970 Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, subsequently published under the title Sincerity and Authenticity. 'Now and then,' Trilling wrote, 'it is possible to observe the moral life in process of revising itself, perhaps by reducing the emphasis it formerly placed upon one or another of its elements, perhaps by inventing and adding to itself a new element, some mode of conduct or of feeling which hitherto it had not regarded as essential to virtue.'
"The moral transit traced by Trilling began with the emergence in the early sixteenth century of a new sense of the word sincere. Previously understood simply as pure and unadulterated, and applied primarily to substances (a 'sincere' wine), it now came to mean 'the absence of dissimulation or feigning or pretense.' Somewhat paradoxically, though, sincerity was also understood to be a performance for one's peers, for society. Playing the role of being ourselves, Trilling explained, 'we sincerely act the part of a sincere person.'
"At the dawn of the last century, with flickerings even before, a related but more exacting conception emerged, driven by intimations that socially calibrated sincerity was neither real nor true enough. Enter authenticity, at the behest of which, Trilling claimed, 'much that was once thought to make up the very fabric of culture has come to seem of little account, mere fantasy or ritual, or downright falsification,' while much that culture had previously deemed unacceptable was now 'accorded a considerable moral authority by reason of the authenticity claimed for it, for example, disorder, violence, unreason.' All became permissible, even praiseworthy, in the name of authenticity. From Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov to Conrad's Mr. Kurtz to James Dean's role in Rebel without a Cause, the unleashing of primal impulses was recognized as one of the more dangerous, but perhaps undeniable, consequences, of pursuing one's inner truth." | |  | From the latest issue: There is perhaps no piece of clothing that has been so thoroughly transformed into a symbol of cultural and political conflict as the COVID-19 mask has been during the last year and a half. At first a simple safety measure, the mask quickly came to be associated with a constellation of polarizing commitments such as one's political views and party affiliation, support for vaccines or other public health measures, and a general attitude about the authority and legitimacy of experts. The mask, in short, has become another sign that the United States is continuing to sort itself into increasingly specific and vexed polarities.
In "Masks Off: The Politics of Sincerity and Authenticity," historian and writer Charlie Riggs argues that the cultural potency of the mask—and all that it symbolized—only began to become clear once many of the strict public health mandates were relaxed and the mask itself slipped down.
"As Norbert Elias pointed out decades ago in The Civilizing Process—his account of the internalization of 'manners' and the formation of the European Superego—it is only when social norms are in the process of formation or dissolution that they are capable of being stated explicitly. A successful taboo does not stoop to justify itself. At a certain point, more when the pandemic was ending (or at least seeming to do so) than at its height, it became obvious that masks were a matter of good manners as much as strict necessity or safety. Like the modes of bodily conduct Elias once showed taking shape, such as eating with utensils or blowing one's nose into a handkerchief, mask wearing surpassed its strict rationale and became an autonomous, disciplinary psychic force, a matter of inflicting and avoiding shame rather than just avoiding disease.
"Then again, the same could be said of most of the clothes we wear—and a mask is also a piece of clothing. Surely, being aware of a custom's artificiality does not negate the need for it. Should the advent of warmer weather cause us to go about naked? Public nakedness, as Elias demonstrated, used to be fairly commonplace in medieval Europe. Now clothing is a hallmark of what everyone—with apologies to nudists—recognizes as 'civilization,' even if fewer and fewer people are willing to use that word anymore.
"Our most treasured customs are all gratuitous, from the standpoint of strict necessity. 'Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, fork'd animal as thou art,' King Lear says to the raving, half-naked Tom o' Bedlam, just before he himself disrobes and goes wandering upon the heath. 'Off, you lendings!' Off, you masks! These are the words of a madman." | |  | Also from the new issue: Authenticity is not just a matter of rebellion, a mode of rejecting the social norms and expectations of peers or authorities. More frequently today, such expectations are not exactly reversed but twisted: We are counted on to use familiar tropes and employ certain styles of self-presentation that will convey an aura of authenticity—to show we are actually the most compelling versions of our truest selves. If this sounds like a contradiction, you're not alone. High school seniors across the country would agree. That's because nowhere is this careful performance perhaps more severely demanded than in that tortured stage of the meritocratic cursus honorum—the college application essay.
As sociologist Joseph E. Davis, colloquy chair at IASC and frequent THR contributor, writes in "How to Be Yourself: The Studied Art of the College Application Essay" about this high-stakes assignment:
"The instructions seem simple enough: Pick one of the prompts (topics) and just write a short essay, no more than 650 words, that 'helps you distinguish yourself in your own voice.' Most of the Common App—an undergraduate application form used by more than 900 colleges and universities—consists of fill-in-the-blank numbers and lists of things. The essay gives you the chance to tell the admissions officers what you want them 'to know about you' beyond 'courses, grades, and test scores.' All they are asking for is a story, really. Yes, it must be written 'clearly and concisely.' That will require patience and rewriting, but help is available, ranging from parents and English teachers to professional essay coaches and editors (with a variety of packages to fit every budget). But the story is about you, about what is important to you, about what makes you unique. On that topic, you're the foremost expert. What could possibly go wrong?
"Plenty, judging from the burgeoning industry offering specialized instruction to college applicants in how to write a successful personal essay (or 'personal statement'). Curiously, the mandate to 'just be yourself' is what makes the writing most challenging. The college preparatory service CollegeVine, for example, informs applicants that the personal essay 'should be an opportunity for the admissions officers to get to know you better and give them a glimpse into who you really are.' So far, so good. You're writing for someone who wants to know you better. But then you discover that well beyond good writing technique, CollegeVine helps applicants 'learn what admissions officers are looking for' and discover how they will 'read and evaluate your essays.' The service will show you 'what works to get accepted,' based on its extensive research and analysis. And CollegeVine produces essay guides that will provide you 'with clear, actionable ways to write an authentic essay.' Suddenly, 'presenting yourself as you are,' to quote a former dean of admissions at Yale, looks rather daunting." | |  | Web Features: Sheep cut an enduring figure in cultural life. From poetry to sacred scriptures to philosophical inquiry—and from Homer to Heidegger and beyond—the metaphor of the sheep keeps showing up. In "The Silencing of the Lambs," writer and translator Bruce J. Krajewski suggests that a metaphorology is needed for this ovine recurrence. Krajewski is prompted by the recent release of the Icelandic film, "The Lamb."
"Philosophers seemingly fancy sheep, but they're not alone. For example, The Lamb crosses territory familiar to the literary set who read 'The Wolf and the Seven Kids' in the tales of the Brothers Grimm, Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood, Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, Ethan Coen's 'We Sheep,' Kafka's Metamorphosis, Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase, or J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello, whose main character acknowledges 'no bounds to our sympathetic imagination': just as we can turn ourselves into a character in a novel and experience that character's experiences, so we can turn ourselves into any living thing, whether 'a bat or a chimpanzee or an oyster' or a sheep.
"Such turning (human into animal or animal-human hybrid—mermaids, werewolves, minotaurs, harpies, centaurs) can be startling. Even Christians aren't prepared for that kind of transubstantiation. Reactions can be violent. As The Lamb's director, Valdimar Jóhannsson, says, 'I have spent a lot of time with sheep farmers. When a lamb, or some other animal, is born and something is wrong, they euthanize it.' We want to see what we have always seen. What's 'natural' relies on recursion. Killing something that doesn't look right counts as normal, the result of 'ancestral practices,' says Jóhannsson. This helps to explain The Lamb's horror film label. A sympathetic imagination can appear to others to be frighteningly 'unnatural.' In most circumstances, for some, even the everyday imaginary cannot tolerate a routine sheep or a sheep's routine. Think of the vitriolic use of 'sheeple' or Tipu Sahab's famous saying, 'One day of life as a tiger is far better than a thousand years of living as a sheep.'" | |  | | | | | | | Copyright (C) 2021 The Hedgehog Review. All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Update Preferences | Unsubscribe  |
|
|
|
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment
Keep a civil tongue.