Authenticity

The notion of authenticity is probably among the most widely debated in the history of tourism studies. Since its introduction into the field by Dean MacCannell (1973; 1976), articles have sought to refine the concept by confronting it with different kinds of data. Also, several review articles have been published (for the most recent, see Rickly, 2022), including several in French (Cravatte, 2009; Cousin, 2011). Yet the debate remains intense, and the concept itself continues to evolve. Indeed, no consensus has ever been reached on authenticity, as theoretical perspectives (from which most theories of authenticity have emerged) and empirical examinations of those theories have evolved. Retracing the successive layers of meaning given to authenticity, therefore, amounts to reading part of the social science history of tourism.

Authenticity for MacCannell

The Tourist, Dean MacCannell’s pioneering work in tourism studies, published in 1976, places authenticity at the centre of an explanatory framework for tourist practices. In particular, the concept of “staged authenticity” attracted the greatest attention from the scientific community, which was still in its infancy as regards tourism research. In reality, most of MacCannell’s argument had already been set out in a 1973 article. It can be summarised as follows.

MacCannell’s theory is not a general theory of tourism, but rather what he calls an “ethnography of modernity”, based on an analysis of tourist practices insofar as they reveal the mechanisms of the modern condition. For MacCannell, one of the fundamental features of this condition lies in the widespread modern perception of the inauthenticity of social relations and, more profoundly, of modern life. In short, for MacCannell, it is a sense of alienation, specific to the modern condition, that underlies a quest for authenticity and drives tourist practices.

To understand how this quest for authenticity structures the tourist experience, MacCannell draws on Erving Goffman’s theory of social life. For Goffman, the social world is divided into two categories, two symbolic spaces (Goffman, 1959). The first is the “frontstage”: the public space, where individuals perform their social roles. The second is the “backstage”, defined in opposition to the stage. Here, individuals can suspend their performance, take refuge from others’ gaze, etc. MacCannell indicates that modern individuals tend to think of authenticity as always on the side of private life, therefore, in the backstage, which leads them to search behind the stage for what they consider authentic. However, the reason for referring to Goffman is not simply to apply it to tourism, but to show how the tourist experience reveals the need to develop this dichotomy. Indeed, those receiving tourists tend to preserve their privacy outside a stage on which they can control their image, while tourists are always seeking to go beyond it. This results in the production of scenes that are, more or less, presented to tourists as backstages: what MacCannell refers to as “staged authenticity”. Although MacCannell produces an expanded model based on the Goffman frontstage/backstage dichotomy, it remains the fundamental structure within which the relationship between authenticity and inauthenticity remains dialectical.

Authenticity, the impossible horizon of tourism practices?

Introduced into tourism studies by MacCannell, authenticity quickly generated extensive debate that continues to rage around several questions. One of the main ones, and the most contentious one, is undoubtedly the place of the tourist in this theory. On this point, there are some precedents. Indeed, the general trend observed by those who, either from near or far, comment on the emergence of tourism depicts the tourist as a mystified and deceived individual, with access only to “pseudo-events,” according to Daniel J. Boorstin (Boorstin, 1964). MacCannell clearly distanced himself from Boorstin’s position by rejecting any difference between a tourist approach and an academic one, the latter, according to Boorstin, being the only path to authenticity. Nevertheless, MacCannell retained the idea that reality is transformed for tourists, implying that, even if tourists are not necessarily deceived, they are seeking something ever more distant as the object of their search is staged. From this point, we can examine how MacCannell’s theory was initially received, particularly in the work of another major anthropologist of tourism, Edward B. Bruner, who has consistently shown himself hostile to the idea of authenticity.

In a 1991 article, Bruner placed MacCannell and Boorstin on the same intellectual horizon, without taking account of the former’s efforts to distinguish himself from the latter. For Bruner, the idea of authenticity as a concept for interpreting tourist practices is doomed to failure, since no culture is authentic or inauthentic. Ultimately, it only serves to devalue tourists. He writes that:

 “For Boorstin as for MacCannell, there is a truly authentic culture situated somewhere beyond the tourist gaze” (Bruner, 1991, author’s translation).

A large part of Bruner’s work is based on this critique of the very idea of authenticity, rooted in decades of study that highlight the dynamic and relational character of all cultures. However, he is mistaken in claiming that MacCannell’s theory implies the existence of authentic cultures, with the latter himself later responding to the anthropologist (MacCannell, 2008), arguing that authenticity matters only insofar as the sense feeling of its presence emerges, within tourist practice, from a dialectic between frontstage and backstage. Bruner is not the only scholar to have misinterpreted MacCannell’s theory, and misunderstandings persist today, whether through a somewhat reduced embrace of the concept of authenticity or through its categorical rejection.

That is why it is crucial to distinguish between emic and etic perspectives on authenticity. As the social sciences have gradually moved away from a normative position aimed at adjudicating, in this case, the authenticity of tourist experiences and their content, they have adopted a more hermeneutic approach. If authenticity remains a useful concept in tourism studies, it is only sought in individuals’ own perspectives, which implies abandoning it in certain cases and, above all, never treating its existence as objective. Doing so also avoids the risk of portraying tourists as endlessly deceived.

Authenticity, a cross-cutting notion for studying modernity?

Although the notion of authenticity has generated a specific debate in tourism studies, it is clearly not confined to this field. In marketing, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the broader human and social sciences, authenticity is a contested concept. It would be too much of an undertaking to provide a multi-disciplinary summary of it. Nevertheless, the consistency with which authenticity is invoked as a key notion in the analysis of modernity, with which it appears inseparable, is striking. Everywhere, authenticity is seen as a modern ideal. In philosophy, authenticity is considered a substitute for the ancient ideal of wisdom, which advocated self-transcendence and, in modern societies, was transformed into an invitation to be truly oneself (Romano, 2020). This theme runs through modern philosophy from Rousseau to Taylor (1994), including the existentialist philosophy of Heidegger and Sartre. Beyond fields that concern the self directly, authenticity has long been applied to art, in particular since Walter Benjamin’s famous essay The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproduction (2013), which argues that art has entered a new era in which the question of authenticity acquires its full meaning (Heinich, 1999). In terms of consumption, authenticity is a concept used to characterise both modern ideals tinged with nostalgia and quests for a “true self”, in both fundamental research (Warnier, 1994) and applied research. Finally, although the term authenticity is not always central, or even explicitly present, it should be recalled that authenticity appeared in tourism studies (therefore, firstly with a question raised by Boorstin, and then, above all, with MacCannell) within an intellectual context marked by a lengthy reflection on the nature of reality, often referred to as “hyperreality” in modernity, which forms a body of literature which, alongside Boorstin himself, includes some of the most influential thinkers of the 1960s and 1970s (particularly Baudrillard, Eco, Debord, etc.).

Hot and cool authentication

After MacCannell, several anthropologists sought to complete the emic analysis of authenticity, thereby unambiguously highlighting its evolutive character. Indeed, in the absence of a model and given that its recognition depends on a dialectical relationship, authenticity can never be definitively defined. By referring to “emergent authenticity”, Erik Cohen focused on the negotiable nature of authenticity. For Cohen’s view, MacCannell’s theory suggests an infinite construction of stagings in which authenticity ultimately escapes both tourists and locals. However, it is necessary to consider how tourists and locals, individually, construct their understandings of what counts as authentic. Thus, a staged presentation may become authentic for both those who stage it (locals) and tourists themselves. Building on this idea, Erik Cohen developed a “matrix” for analysing the emergence of authenticity (Cohen, 1988), which challenges the notion that staging is automatically perceived as artificial and, conversely, that an authentic performance cannot be (mis)interpreted as staged. As Tom Selwyn (1996) noted, cultural fabrications may serve as supports for “authentically social” situations and, therefore, there might be “authentic fakes,” according to Daniel Brown (1999). However, while Cohen’s matrix opens the way to acknowledging greater complexity in the subjective experience of authenticity, it preserves a problematic dichotomy between “reality” and “staging”. Indeed, to be operational, this interpretative grid of subjective constructions of authenticity requires the ability to distinguish between a real situation and a staged one, a task that necessarily falls to the researcher. In this respect, reference to “reality” is no less problematic than reference to authenticity itself. It also results in an authoritative reduction of subjectivities.

Nevertheless, Cohen should also be credited with drawing specific attention to authentication processes. It is important to note that the terminological shift initiated by Cohen, from authenticity to authentication, is part of a set of calls to highlight the constructivist approach in the social sciences through terminology. This is what Brubaker proposed when he suggested abandoning the term “identity” in favour of “identification” (Brubaker, 2001). Cohen distinguished two distinct methods in authentication processes: cold authentication and hot authentication (III. 1). The idea of two types of authenticity is already present when referring to etic and emic dimensions, and it was Tom Selwyn who first described them in terms of “hot” (subjective authenticity) and “cool” (objective, scientific authenticity). However, by shifting from an interest in authenticity to a questioning of everything based on the hot/cool dichotomy, Erik Cohen highlights a crucial point: the ability to make and unmake authenticity.  Selwyn’s cool authenticity is based on objective characteristics and legitimised by scholarly procedures. In terms of authentication, the emergence of cool authenticity therefore results from a performative discourse involving the actions of identifiable agents whose authority is recognised as legitimate. By contrast, hot authentication (for Selwyn’s, authenticity linked to the quest for an authentic self or other) is a more diffuse, co-constructed process, based on belief rather than proof, and may even emerge as a critique of cool authenticity. Furthermore, it is in the observation of the combinations between these two types of authentication that we necessarily find the richest applications of Cohen’s reflections. Finally, the approach also clarifies the researcher’s role by assigning them a specific position. If the researcher has any role in recognising authenticity, their work lies on the side of cool authenticity, an affirmation that never prevents other players from interpreting what they believe to be authentic differently. More convincingly, the focus on the process-based aspects of authentication (rather than authenticity) has the merit of dispelling doubts about the substantive existence of authenticity and asserting the need to approach it from a constructivist angle.

The authentic self

Underlying all these reflections, the question of why authenticity matters so much to tourists remains open. However, it is an important question, but its foundations appear fragile. MacCannell took care to ground the significance of a quest for authenticity in a generalised sense of alienation experienced by modern individuals, a move that many commentators subsequently criticised. Nevertheless, references to authenticity rarely occur without a reference to a quest with elsewhere and the Other as a pretext, a method ultimately aimed at reconnecting with the self. For Tom Selwyn, who, with MacCannell, shares the view that the main interest of tourism studies lies in understanding the nature of modern society, there are distinct types of myths (Selwyn, 1996) that constitute authenticity. The first is the myth of the authentic Other, whom tourism allows individuals to meet. The second is the myth of social authenticity, which concerns forms of life in society perceived as having been lost in modernity. Finally, the third is the myth of the authentic self, which presupposes the existence of a pure, real self, buried beneath modern existence (to use MacCannell’s terminology) or constrained by consumer society (a term Selwyn appears to prefer when describing the modern condition). According to Selwyn, one of the most fundamental myths of authenticity concerns the self, and we might be tempted to regard it as the most important one, the ultimate goal of the quest. After all, the first two myths, those of the Other and of social life, are merely projections whose point of departure is the sense of an alienated or diminished self. Their sole function is to situate elsewhere the conditions necessary for self-expression perceived as authentic.

It is within this perspective, too, that Ning Wang (1999) proposed the concept of existential authenticity, a feeling strongly shaped by romanticism and nostalgia that underpin Selwyn’s myths and that would emerge through the fulfilment of the self, or, more precisely, of the “true” self. Sharing the typological obsession of his predecessors, Wang divides existential authenticity into two categories (which he adds to “objective” and “constructive” authenticity), thus repeating, in different terms, the hot/cool distinction. Intrapersonal existential authenticity concerns self-realisation made possible by extraction from one’s environment of origin (and facilitated, for example, in natural settings). Interpersonal existential authenticity, by contrast, concerns the sharing of an authentic social relationship, sought in the first instance within the temporary community formed by tourists (here Wang draws on Victor Turner’s concept of communitas (Turner, 1969)). This focus on self-fulfilment through tourism has thus contributed to extending the debate on authenticity. Paradoxically, even as MacCannell’s work is sometimes criticised for its overly totalising theoretical scope, these innovations based on the concept of “staged authenticity” have broadened the scope of authenticity. It has gradually become a concept with sometimes poorly defined contours, prompting some to advocate abandoning it altogether (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006).

Studying and considering authenticity as a marker of ethnocentrism

If we accept the hermeneutic turn that has shaped the use of authenticity in analysing tourism phenomena, it becomes essential that the concept of authenticity, or similar notions (we could debate whether an expanded lexicon of “the true” is sufficient to warrant invoking authenticity) be mobilised by the players themselves. On this point, it is clear that authenticity is always a value in the tourism industry, both in the staging of supply and in the expression of demand and post-experience satisfaction. Thus, abandoning the concept of authenticity altogether seems excessive. Nevertheless, no doubt it is necessary to specify its limits again.

The principal critiques of authenticity concerned the idea of a quest driving tourist practices evoked within the framework of a general theory of tourism. Not all forms of tourism revolve around the search for authenticity, even if Wang’s existential authenticity may appear to be an attempt to apply authenticity to all forms of tourism. In contrast, MacCannell’s original concept appears to concern only so-called “cultural” tourism. However, the most significant obstacles to the claim that the quest for authenticity is universal should be sought elsewhere, not in the formal diversity of practices, but in the diversity of tourists themselves. Studies conducted among Chinese tourists, for example, show limited interest in authenticity, and it appears that modernity is, on the contrary, the goal of the tourism quest (Oakes, 1998; Nyíri, 2006). Thus, extra-Western cases invite us to question the universality of the concept of authenticity. This also requires no longer contenting ourselves with referring to “modernity” as the final goal of studies on constructions of authenticity, since modernity is not the exclusive preserve of the West. Failing such a tightening of the framework, there is probably a risk of overlooking how the “authenticity” category emerged in the West as both an evolution and a continuity in relations to otherness, revealing a certain ethnocentrism.

According to the author Salman Rushdie (1991), “authenticity [is] the respectable child of old-fashioned exoticism” (author’s translation). Indeed, the notions of exoticism and authenticity apply in the same direction, from the West towards the rest of the world. In short, the attribution of authenticity also proceeds from the foundational “great divide” of anthropology (Lenclud, 1996): on the one hand, Western societies, modern, mechanical, and inauthentic; on the other hand, all the rest, organic and authentic, provided they remain sheltered from the standardising power of the West. Authenticity is above all a marker of difference, attesting to the absence of the Same within the Other. It is clear that anthropology is not a stranger to the emergence of authenticity and, therefore, to the appreciation of cultural difference within a regime of proof (Apchain, 2019). Indeed, tourism today shares the concern that once troubled anthropology (in its more culturalist version) about cultural groups free from external influence. Authenticity, therefore, provides an instructive example of a representation that has moved from the academic world to cultural practices (Cousin, 2011).

Seeing things this way has the advantage of overcoming the need to assume a sense of alienation. The search for authenticity, or rather, the tendency to judge difference in terms of its authenticity, appears less as a salvatory quest than the expression of a way of thinking that ranks and hierarchises otherness to understand it. In short, authenticity testifies to a distinctly Western way of thinking about others and their culture.

Thomas APCHAIN

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