Debating Authenticity

The longing for authenticity, on an individual or collective level, connects the search for external expressions to internal orientations. What is largely referred to as production of authenticity is a reformulation of cultural values and norms within the ongoing process of modernity, impacted by globalization and contemporary transnational cultural flows. This collection interrogates the notion of authenticity from an anthropological point of view and considers authenticity in terms of how meaning is produced in and through discourses about authenticity. Incorporating case studies from four continents, the topics reach from art and colonialism to exoticism-primitivism, film, ritual and wilderness. Some contributors emphasise the dichotomy between the academic use of the term and the one deployed in public spaces and political projects. All, however, consider authenticity as something that can only be understood ethnographically, and not as a simple characteristic or category used to distinguish some behaviors, experiences or material things from other less authentic versions.

This volume explores the themes of authorship and authenticity – and connected issues – from the Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance. Its reflection is constructed within a threefold framework. A first section includes topics dealing with dubious or uncertain attribution of ancient works, homonymous writers, and problems regarding the reliability of compilation literature. The middle section goes through several issues concerning authorship: the balance between the author’s contribution to their own work and the role of collaborators, pupils, circles, reviewers, scribes, and even older sources, but also the influence of different compositional stages on the concept of ‘author’, and the challenges presented by anonymous texts. Finally, a third crucial section on authenticity and forgeries concludes the book: it contains contributions dealing with spurious works – or sections of works – , mechanisms of interpolation, misattribution, and deliberate forgery. The aim of the book is therefore to exemplify the many nuances of the complex problems of authenticity and authorship of ancient texts.

Judging Q and saving Jesus is characterised by careful textual analysis, showing a piercing critical eye in its impressive engagement with the secondary literature and sharp, insightful critique. This book takes the stance that the hypothetical document Q can be reconstructed with sufficient precision and that this enables biblical scholars to study with confidence its genre and its thematic and ideological profile. The genre issue is central to the book’s overall structure, and the alternative proposals are discussed at length and with sophistication. The author’s inference is that Q’s macrogenre is sapiential with occasional insertions of apocalyptic microstructures and motifs. This finding embodies progress in Historical Jesus studies. An opposing trend has been to label Jesus an apocalypticist, so that the great ‘either-or’ of contemporary Jesus scholarship has been ‘either eschatological or not’, an alternative that dates back to Albert Schweitzer. The author finds that generally, and even when used apocalyptically, the term Son of Man tends to support arguments best understood as sapiential in outlook. This is consistent with the sapiential genre of the document as a whole. This finding is supported by the close and careful exegesis of Q 6:37?38 (on not judging). He reconstructs the original wording of this saying ‘on not judging’ and explores the idea of ‘weighing’ in judgment (psychostasia), determining in the end that the saying is entirely sapiential.

This volume describes a modern regional culture as it struggles to build a distinct cultural identity through the diversity of musical styles. This book will be invaluable to ethnomusicologists and anthropologists interested in Latin America."--BOOK JACKET.

Whether chronicling the class conflict in the African-American community or exposing the failings of the government response in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Michael Eric Dyson has never shied away from controversy. No stranger to intellectual combat, Dyson has always been ready to engage friends and foes alike in open conversation about the issues that matter. Debating Race collects many of Dyson’s most memorable encounters and most poignant arguments. Dyson shows that he is as eloquent off the cuff as he is on the book page, and Debating Race gives readers a front row seat as he spars with politicians, pundits, and public intellectuals. From John Kerry and John McCain to Ann Coulter and the hosts of television’s "The View”-Dyson shows the mental agility and rhetorical tenacity that have made him one of America’s most astute intellectuals, and with topics ranging from civil rights, the legacy of the O.J. Simpson trial, and the authenticity of Colin Powell there is something in Debating Race to touch a nerve in all of us.

This book investigates the concepts of authenticity and authorship from Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance and addresses issues revolving around three key aspects: the definition of authorship and its boundaries, the debate around authenticity,