Freedom, Equality, and Fulfillment: The Different Stakes of Authenticity Claims

• In Event: Authenticity and Resistance

Abstract

Appeals to authenticity are ubiquitous across contemporary life, yet are also remarkably diverse. From transgender persons seeking to become the gender they truly are, to religious business owners asking for exemption from anti-discrimination laws, a wide range of political claims are cast in terms of authenticity. While authenticity claims often evoke positive ideals of self-congruence and self-actualization, I argue that what makes these claims compelling is their accounts of the costs of inauthenticity. Appeals to authenticity may invoke notions of a true self that has been injured by oppressive norms and practices, or that would be harmed if it assimilated, conformed, or otherwise departed from who it was. Yet how, exactly, does being inauthentic constitute a form of harm? Can being inauthentic ever inflict costs on others, or is it only detrimental to oneself? How can we tell when the costs of inauthenticity are political, as opposed to private, ethical, or individual?

This paper argues that our dominant way of understanding the costs of inauthenticity is through an ethical frame, and reconstructs two alternative ways of reading authenticity claims that are more overtly political. According to the dominant interpretation, inauthenticity involves a private individual missing out on a happier, more fulfilling life, and developing a diminished subjectivity. Political theorists who invoke this ethical reading include Charles Taylor (who argues that being inauthentic causes one “to miss out on the point of one’s life”), John Stuart Mill (who argues that hiding oneself causes one to become “stunted”), and Judith Shklar (who argues that it “deforms one’s personality”). In the paper, I draw out some of the shortcomings of such a reading—an ethical reading of the stakes of inauthenticity may obscure a more political analysis of the causes of inauthenticity, in favor of focusing on individual choice and character traits; it may rely on a false-consciousness argument; and it may lead to a depoliticized understanding of the stakes of authenticity claims. I distinguish this reading from a more political one, which treats the stakes of authenticity claims as the realization of equality and freedom. According to Kenji Yoshino, when citizens change or hide a stigmatized trait or identity, they do so in response to social beliefs that cast them as inferior. Yet doing so leads them to forego liberal freedom—by acting as "a brake or prod" on choice and action—as well as equality— by reinforcing social norms that render them inferior. By contrast, Jean-Jacques Rousseau depicts the costs of inauthenticity in terms of republican freedom and collective self-rule. According to Rousseau, when individuals are overly concerned with how they are being recognized by others, they become less concerned with the task of collective governing, and more oriented towards private, depoliticizing, and often civically harmful pursuits. By articulating these alternative understandings of the stakes of authenticity claims, I clarify why such claims have normative appeal that go beyond ethical concerns with moral action and self-fulfillment. I show why we should understand the stakes of authenticity as political, and how such claims can advance a range of justice and equality claims.

Author

• Nina Hagel, Wesleyan University