Fabricating Authenticity

Jason W. M. Ellsworth & Andie Alexander, eds.

Fabricating Authenticity (Equinox, 2024) is the 4th volume in the Working with Culture on the Edge book series. Following the format of the other volumes in this series, the introduction and afterword are longer, original essays providing substantive theoretical analyses of authenticity discourses. The main chapters, which expand on revised blog posts focusing on claims of authenticity, are paired with response chapters from 14 early career scholars who engage and press further the arguments put forth by Culture on the Edge members. The authors examine authenticity not as an inherent quality but as a socially contested and constructed label used to manage and codify a variety of choices in relation to understandings of identity formation.