Authenticity

Shani Mootoo’s short stories were incredible in that they were able to touch on a number of issues, such as the politics of food, the idea of authenticity, the cultural appropriation from whites, and queer issues and how that plays in the API community. However, I wanted to address the concept of authenticity and the way she addresses it.

The problem of authenticity comes to the foreground when we examine ways in which personal experience and subjective perception factor into the creation of theoretical frameworks. It is not only an epistemological question (validity) but also an ontological one (why does this framework exist, what drew these ideas together and brought them to consciousness.)

Authenticity is something that I’ve always struggled with, and due to that these pieces really spoke to me, and in some ways even paralleled my own experiences. Mootoo starts off ‘Out on Main Street’ with the offhand comment “we ain’t good grade A Indians”. Already, the dilemma underlying authenticity is exposed, because who has made this judgment? who is this cultural authority that dictates who and who is not authentic. And how does one even decide what constitutes authenticity? What are the qualifications that aggregate into this set of standards that then denote authenticity?

The narrator in ‘Out on Main Street’ only sees herself as ‘Indian’ when in the kitchen and in regards to her religion, Hinduism. This is then interesting because even though she practices Hinduism and eats “some kind a Indian food every day”, she still cannot consider herself authentic because she “doh even think ‘bout India unless something happen over dere and it come on de news”. She also is ashamed of the fact that she doesn’t know all the different foods and sweets, and doesn’t seem to realize the impact that living in another country can have on one’s ethnic culture. Before entering the restaurant, the narrator stops to “rumfle up [her] memory, pulling out all de sweet names [she] know[s] from home”, so that she can project authenticity when surrounded by people who will more than likely judge her on her knowledge (which obviously equals authenticity in this case). This resonated with me, as I know that I have done similar actions countless times, if not in such a blatant way. I have actually spent time on Wikipedia ‘learning about my culture’, just so that I could have that knowledge and thus add to my own ‘authenticity’.

The problem with quantifying authenticity in terms of cultural knowledge, love and knowledge of the food, and involvement, besides the obvious marginalization of those in the community that don’t necessarily fulfill these requirements, is the question of application. For example, in “The Upside-Downness of the World” the narrator’s friends, Meghan and Virginia, are seen as authentic by the narrator. They know what seems to be every nuanced detail of India and its culture, worship Hinduism, wear the clothes, and cook and eat Indian food. They even speak in badly imitated accents, while wearing traditional Indian dress. Does all this appreciation and participation in Indian culture transcend their whiteness to authenticity? For the narrator, who is ashamed at what she perceives as her own lack of authenticity, it does. This is obviously problematic in that Meghan and Virginia are appropriating, exoticizing, and fetishizing Indian culture.

But does the fact that Meghan and Virginia obviously consider themselves Indian in everything but actual ethnicity thus render them authentic? That is, is it all subjective and about self-perception? Or rather does authenticity stem from how the larger community views them? This itself is problematic, as exemplified in “Out on Main Street”. By placing this authority in the hands of the community, it delegitimizes the personal opinion of one’s self. For example, someone could easily be dismissed as inauthentic, whether it’s due to their lack of community presence, lack of cultural knowledge, or being multiracial, even if that person personally sees his/herself as authentic. Obviously, that is a huge problem, and helps underline the negotiations and tensions within the very conception of authenticity. There is also the problem in that people who struggle with authenticity are told things such as, ‘you just need to own it’, or propagate other ideas of self-formation, but that helps very little with the reality of social expectations and judgments. The very fact that we must prove ourselves over and over, such as in race competitions and exclusions or the oppression Olympics, speaks to the fact that we are continually forced to play into these cultural and racial stereotypes, and are punished for deviation. And these norms are policed and enforced in all communities, with punishment by delegitimization in cases of deviation. I still feel disassociated from the Christian community on campus despite my past years of involvement and my own personal lifetime experience with Christianity. But because I by no means fit the average idea of what Christian is or how one behaves, I have never felt welcome even though I recognize it is irrational. Why do we even work within these frames? Our society continually determines and boxes people into frames of their own perception (without regard for this person’s own self-conceptualization), and forces people to work within this construction. This in my mind is at the heart of the problem of authenticity.