English

Noun

authenticism ‎(usually uncountable, plural authenticisms)

1. A belief in the superiority of the authentic over the inauthentic.
   • 1994, Allene Cooper, "Science and the Reception of Poetry in Postbellum American Journals," American Periodicals , Vol. 4, p. 44 n4:

     Sinclair Lewis claimed that American letters exemplified a divorce of intellectual life from authenticism and reality.

   • 2006, Jonathan Shull, "Locating the Past in the Present: Living Traditions and the Performance of Early Music," Ethnomusicology Forum, Vol. 15, No. 1, p. 91:

     If performers of Early Music—and especially medieval music—could no longer appeal to an unattainable authenticity, they could nevertheless adhere unabashedly and tenaciously to the values and precepts that spawned authenticism in the first place, namely a comprehension of, and a stalwart respect for, the historical place of their repertoire and the empowerment which accompanies such knowledge.

   • 2007, Megan Swift, "‘The Tale’ and the Novel: Pasternak and the Politics of Genre," Canadian Slavonic Papers, Vol. 49, No. 1/2 (March-June), p. 121:

     Pasternak portrays art as iskusstvo-vran'e, the art that deceives, defending it against Lef's demands for a crude authenticism.

Related terms

• authenticist