Dyssimulation: Reflexivity, Narrative, and the Quest for Authenticity in “Living History”

Handler, Richard; Saxton, William

doi:10.1525/can.1988.3.3.02a00020

Cited by 190 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Jean Baudrillard (1994: 12-13), for example, takes Disneyland as a symbol of 'hyperreality': the corporate production of fantasy that becomes so indistinguishable from reality that it starts to undermine consumers' ability to distinguish fact from fantasy (c.f., Mitchell 1992;Sherry et al 2001). In anthropological research, discussion of authenticity has been concentrated in studies of art, museums, folk performances, tourism, and the 'invention of tradition', sometimes drawing on earlier concerns about cultural inauthenticity in our field (e.g., Handler and Saxton 1988;MacCannell 1973;Sapir 1949;Stanley 1998;Wang 1999).…”

Section: Virtualism and The Recycling Of The Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘As Real As It Gets!’ Producing hyperviolence in mixed martial arts

Downey

2014

JOMEC Journal

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Section: Virtualism and The Recycling Of The Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘As Real As It Gets!’ Producing hyperviolence in mixed martial arts

Downey

2014

JOMEC Journal

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“…Traditional culture becomes more genuine, real, and unique if wrapped in authenticity (Sharpley, 1994) and "the presence of the original is the prerequisite of the concept of authenticity" (Benjamin, 1968). Handler and Saxton (1988) observe that "an authentic experience [...] is one in which individuals feel themselves to be in touch both with a 'real' world and with their 'real' selves". In particular, Selwyn (1996) distinguished authenticity as "knowledge" (namely "cool" authenticity) and "feeling" (namely "hot" authenticity), depending on whether it concerns the "real" world or the "real" self and society respectively.…”

Section: The Concept Of Authenticitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Visitors’ Perception of Authenticity at the Museums: Archaeology Versus Modern Art

2012

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The aim of this paper is to analyse quantitatively the visitors' perception of authenticity in two different types of museums: archaeology versus modern and contemporary art.The research is based on 1,288 questionnaires collected from June to September 2011 among the visitors of the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology (ÖTZI) in Bolzano and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MART) in Trento-Rovereto. Logit models were used in order to estimate the set of independent variables that significantly influence both the perception of the authenticity and the "virtual" choice between the two types of museums considered. The results suggested that the authenticity perception was related to peculiar authenticity-related factors and by specific socio-demographic characteristics of the interviewee, although some common elements emerge. In particular, ÖTZI authenticity is linked to its uniqueness in the world, whereas MART visitors relate authenticity to the museum's building and the perception that it was not just a tourist attraction. The empirical evidence confirms the well-known concept that authenticity perception is a dynamic experience, depending on the peculiar characteristics of the attraction analysed.

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“…57 Handler and Saxton (1988) examine some of these problems, including the contrast in framing between experiencing events as they unfold and retrospectively performing events understood to be vitally important, historic occurrences.…”

Section: Performing the Ideal Nationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite the many recontextualizations of the artifact along the way, they present the aircraft as representing the original context. The original context, of course, is impossible to reconstruct and experience (Handler and Saxton 1988). What this process does, then, is introduce a materialist understanding of history.…”

Section: Authenticating the Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, we find no better indicator that warbirders see a difference between their airplanes and the current technology than the recurring reference to the planes as ghosts. (Handler and Saxton 1988), but also because they can only partially reproduce the experience of the massive industrial production of World War II. This taste for the industrial, for machines in all their noise and mass, constitutes the warbird technoaesthetic, but this noise and mass are instantiated in machines that are marked as vanishing (Ivy 1995).…”

Section: The Ghost Squadronmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Better Past Through Technology: World War II Warplanes as Cultural Heritage

Wayland

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The restoration of World War II warplanes offers the chance to explore technology and history as cultural constructs in American culture. Beginning in the 1960's, several different groups began to collect these planes, called "warbirds," and to fly them at airshows and public commemorations as a form of cultural heritage. This investigation merges actor network theory from the field of science & technology studies with anthropological work on cultural invention to examine how these warbird afficionados use their airplanes to invent a usable past. The past they invoke allows them not only to attract veterans who share their emotional stories of the war, but also to imagine the United States during the "Good War"as an ideal, militarized nation which should serve as a model for the present. This cultural invention occurs both at airshows, where the warbirds perform for the public, and in restoration and maintenance hangars, where both professionals and volunteers engage in craft labor. Both the sublime experience of the planes' operation and the obsolete skills required for their maintenance evoke a better, simpler past for these afficionados. Such interactions with the aircraft foster an Industrial Romanticism which manages to embrace the discourse of technological progress as necessary while at the same time preserving a wistful sense that the passing of these piston-engined aircraft meant the loss of their own ability to understand and work on machines. This labor, then, provides for a performance of masculine competence which now escapes them in their daily life.ii

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Dyssimulation: Reflexivity, Narrative, and the Quest for Authenticity in “Living History”

Cited by 190 publications

References 4 publications

‘As Real As It Gets!’ Producing hyperviolence in mixed martial arts

‘As Real As It Gets!’ Producing hyperviolence in mixed martial arts

The Visitors’ Perception of Authenticity at the Museums: Archaeology Versus Modern Art

A Better Past Through Technology: World War II Warplanes as Cultural Heritage

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