Afterall Journal Issue 25 Foreword: Authenticity and Modernity

Pablo Lafuente's foreword to Afterall Journal Issue 25 (published October 4, 2010) examines the concept of authenticity in art and politics. While authenticity is often invoked to assert value in the art world, it is now associated with essentialist and dogmatic positions. Lafuente traces the philosophical history of authenticity from Montesquieu and Rousseau through Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, noting Adorno's 1964 dismissal of its jargon as complicit with fascism. Marshall Berman's 1970 book 'The Politics of Authenticity' reframed authenticity as an emancipatory tool that critiques unequal social structures. Berman's later 'All That Is Solid Melts into Air' (1982) describes modernity as a maelstrom of disintegration and renewal. Lafuente contrasts this with the post-1989 and post-2008 context, where the blurring of differences has given way to a brutal dialectic of modernity with only destructive impulses remaining. The issue features artists Judith Hopf and Zoe Leonard, who expose the homogenizing force of neoliberal markets, and Rabih Mroué and Želimir Žilnik, who address political violence. The foreword also discusses collective political subjects, referencing Elias Canetti's 'Crowds and Power' and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, whose visual strategies combined individual recognition with collective action.