From Extremity to Releasement: Place, Authenticity, and the Self

Abstract

The investigation of authenticity has been a major theme in the work of Charles Guignon. In his definitive discussion of authenticity, On Being Authentic, Guignon argues against certain narrow forms of authenticity while also arguing for an expanded version of the concept, one that can also encompass the notion, to which authenticity is otherwise often opposed, of releasement. Yet Guignon’s assimilation of authenticity and releasement, as well as his development of a more positive concept of the authentic, seems to depend on underplaying the problematic character of authenticity as this is evident in Lionel Trilling’s original discussion in Sincerity and Authenticity. A key text in Trilling’s discussion is Wordsworth’s poem ‘Michael’, and that poem provides a means both to explore the problematic character of authenticity, notably its tendency towards extremity, and the real contrast between authenticity and releasement. Moreover, through the focus on Wordsworth’s ‘Michael’, the latter concept is also shown to bring with it an emphasis, largely underdeveloped in Guignon’s discussion, on the essential relation of self to place—an emphasis that, when properly developed, actually runs counter to the notion of the authentic.