Against authenticity

Authenticity has long been a lynchpin of our thinking about heritage. It is a threshold question as to whether we even consider something to be heritage. Because authenticity is a threshold question, we have often assumed it and its relevance. Scholarship on authenticity therefore focuses on how it is created and (re)negotiated, seldom scrutinising the work authenticity does. This article unpacks the work of authenticity, ultimately arguing against it and attempting to imagine a heritage world without it. In order to do so, this article maps out the different types of work authenticity does in relation to heritage, and then recasts the discussion in relation to Walter Benjamin's own views about authenticity in relation to aura. As I show in the article, Walter Benjamin's work was initially read as apolitical, which prevented us from understanding that he himself was very critical of authenticity and the work it did. Therefore, our reliance on Benjamin to justify authenticity is unwarranted, and we need to reimagine whether authenticity is still (or ever was) a useful concept in how we imagine and manage heritage and the discourses around it.