Why be real? the anxieties of contemporary authenticity
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Who this event is for
Location
John Henry Brookes Main LectureTheatre, John Henry Brookes Building, Headington Campus
Details
Do you have a true self? Professor Daniel Lea will address
the issue of what authenticity actually means in an age of
ever-increasing complexity.
With injunctions to be who we are, eat organically
and commit to those things in which we truly believe,
contemporary society encourages us to live authentically.
But do the demands for individuality and genuineness in
the realm of personal identity clash with the imperatives of
global economics and digital media, or are they a natural
extension of late-modernity’s contradictory relation to the
self?
Daniel’s lecture will explore the resurgence in interest of the
ethical dimensions of authenticity in contemporary literature
and philosophy to ask whether it is still possible to believe in
a concept as seemingly simple as a true self.