Authenticity is only definable against the inauthenticity it struggles against, not as a state

Evidence

Yet the ethic of play is at the same time positive and abstract: what is concrete is that which prevents its realization. Genuine, concrete authenticity must therefore be defined in terms of that against which it has to struggle, rather than as a type of ideal. Indeed, for both Heidegger and Sartre, authenticity is seen as a later form than that inauthenticity which has priority over it and which constitutes the primary mode of being of human life. Genuine authenticity is therefore not a state (to think so would be to fall back into precisely that illusion of being which is at issue), but rather something precariously wrested from inauthenticity, reclaimed and reconquered from it, and in perpetual danger of collapsing back into the older form (for Heidegger anonymity, for Sartre mauvaise foi). For this reason we would do well, I think, to consider the idea of authenticity a critical one: for it cannot be defined in itself but only against some preexisting situation and state of inauthenticity which it is designed to correct or remove. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 545

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines authenticity as a critical (negative) concept, not an ideal state — a key methodological move in dialectical criticism.
• XREF: Connects to Adorno’s negative dialectics and to Jameson’s own later account of critical concepts; also corresponds to how postmodernism’s ‘negative’ thinking operates. — connects to: Authenticity is a socially constructed ideal defined only against what it is not. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 651; Identity is defined oppositionally, against those one is not.; Identity is constituted through exclusion of what it is not (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Authenticity is a socially constructed ideal defined only against what it is not. #corroborates (0.95) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 651
• Identity is defined oppositionally, against those one is not. #corroborates (0.80)
• Identity is constituted through exclusion of what it is not #corroborates (0.78)