Authenticity of persona: an illusory quasi-virtue?

As a major theme of this week’s lecture, I have been musing over the notion of authenticity, curious as to what exactly it means for an artist, or a person, to be an authentic person as the phrase goes. It would be the philosophy student to quibble over definitions, but I think this is an important discussion. In the end, I am doubtful as to the merits of “authenticity” in art as I understand the word.

Dictionary.com defines “authentic” as follows:

authentic — adj
1. of undisputed origin or authorship; genuine: an authentic signature
2. accurate in representation of the facts; trustworthy; reliable: an authentic account
3. (of a deed or other document) duly executed, any necessary legal formalities having been complied with

I think that the second meaning of the word is the most similar to the way in which we were using the word “authentic” in class. Still, what are the facts when it comes to a person, and in what way do human beings represent the facts of their identity, as it seems is necessary for there to be an authentic person? What makes Lady Gaga an authentic artist or not?

I think the simplest way for a person to be authentic is for them to consciously seek to portray to others their own sense of identity; that is, they do not seek to exaggerate or misrepresent their emotions, inclinations or activities to others. Similarly, they are sincere in that they act in a way for the reasons that they allude to, not out of hidden motives. So, for Lady Gaga to stress her hyperspeed post-modern fashion sense, or her feeling of alienation, instead of giving "airtime" to other aspects of her person, might be insincere.

But I am skeptical about whether one might ever represent these things in a truly adequate fashion, and the extent to which one must make these things known. Everyone must inevitably portray oneself in a limited way in all social interactions. One cannot be all that they are at any given moment. Thus, it might be said that one is merely a shadow of their whole self at any given time, in a manner similar to the notion of persona. So one might argue that one cannot reveal all the complexity of oneself and thus cannot be completely authentic at any given moment in time.

The criticism might be posed that to willingly deceive is different than to withhold, however I think that the distinction is not completely unrelated. To truthfully speak of oneself, one cannot merely allow a few interrelated traits to make themselves known: to be truthful in describing oneself this caricature would have to be expanded such that one knows all of the traits of a person, their relative importance, and relations within a person. This is impossible, a reformulation of Kierkegaard's idea of the unknowable other. There is something about each and every person -- a formulation of their characteristics and experiences -- that makes knowing them, in particular what it is to be them, unknowable.

Even if we do not acknowledge that, the modern view of art tends to do away with the notion of there being a concrete message that the artist seeks to convey in a piece of art. Rather art facilitates a space where a dialogue might occur between art and audience. I think that for such a dialogue to occur, one need not consider the artist behind the artwork -- it is the piece itself which contains the meaning, which may involve the usage of an explicit persona in cases of music videos. For the artist to portray herself in a particular manner is to make an aesthetic decision which demands interpretation. In the case of Lady Gaga for example, as alluded to in the article by Corona, her work may be interpreted as a consciousness of the hyperspeed of culture and the evolution of memory and belonging in such a context. We should not judge Gaga's persona in artistic contexts as a representation of herself, but as a character component of the art she produces.