Authenticity And Affirmative Culture

Authenticity could present itself as one of the predominant examples of affirmative culture. This makes authenticity an even greater example of affirmative culture than the soul; the soul was at least concerned with ethical behavior to others.50 Authenticity and affirmative culture glorify resignation; irreplaceable, indistinguishable man is put above all social and natural distinctions.51 To be authentic, one does not even have to do this; a torturer can justify himself on being an authentic torturer.52 Authenticity arises at a time when affirmative culture began it's self abolition; every sphere of one's life is subject to intense discipline.53 With no escape, the authentic self represents the ultimate, self-destructive withdrawal and dialectically, the prime illustration of affirmative culture. Authenticity has become the perfect example of affirmative culture.

A dialectical, historically mediated subjectivity is the best way to deal with the problems presented in authenticity.

This dialectically conceived subjectivity is historically formed and not reducible to historical determinations; The limits of this constitutive synthesis reflects the relations between abstract concepts.54 The authentic self is a "mineness" that is entirely empty of any sort of content; it becomes a form of empty thought.55 No thought or feeling is simply tautological under this conception of subjectivity; each mental activity requires the other.56 Rather than grant more freedom, the uncritical jargon of authenticity constrains the freedom of this historical subjectivity.57 A historical, dialectical subjectivity is the greatest method for dealing with the problems of the authentic

self.
Considering the various problems with the authentic self, it ought to be explained in terms of a dialectical self that is mediated through history. Authenticity and existentialism in general, could not have arisen out of a vacuum; like all other systems of ideas it must have been the result of a specific historical moment. While the idea fails on it's own merits, it should be analyzed dialectically in order for the dialectical self to potentially realize further historical possibilities. The historical and socioeconomic developments must have resulted from a conception of self that was historically mediated. For the variety of reasons demonstrated above, the universalistic, authentic self does not seem to be capable of explaining even itself succinctly, thus there seems to be a need for an alternative account of self. This historically mediated self must exist to explain the arrival of authenticity and what this entails.
This historically mediated self begins with the relationship between the subject and the object. The subject was not initially entirely alien to the object. However, nature in its ambiguity presented a threat of subsuming the subject. Initially, perception was a form of projection in which the subject behaved mimetically towards the externality that was a threat.58 To reflect the object as it was, the subject had to give more back to it than receive from it; a synthetic unity is the result as the object both constitutes and is separate from the self.59 The two would relate dialectically as the subject would need to take a part of the object into himself in order to control it. The unity of the subject was not presupposed; magical acts were directed at the specific individual rather than a mere specimen.60 Even in the act of sacrifice, the chosen victim still had an element that was particular to it and so avoided commodity fetishism.61 This mimetic relationship was primitive man's way of dealing with nature. The primitive relationship between subject and object was a mimetic one.
The rational, independent, autonomous self emerged from the increased domination of man over nature. In the attempt to dominate nature, man gives his ordering mind a godly status; nothing is incapable of being understood and dominated.62 Instead of the multiple masks of the medicine man, man has taken possession of himself through one impenetrable mask.63 Modern man claims to transform his process into one of a pure truth that underlies the world that it enslaves.64 The task of mimesis was not to find an underlying, hidden truth underlying the world that was to be dominated.65The unity of the subject is presupposed while all things are abstracted to essences and are denied their specificity.66 Man becomes the rational, orderly subject while nature is solely passive objectivity: the unified cosmos to be exploited.67 This process was necessary for the further advancements in industrial capitalism to arise68. Man became and has become increasingly distant from the object.69The autonomous self emerged as an attempt to dominate nature: to understand nature in order to control it.
The domination of nature by the subject coalesced into the subjugation of nature into the subject. Beginning in the enlightenment, knowledge obtained through abstraction proposed to be free from power and wealth and would establish man as the master of nature.70 All mythological figures and every magical figure could simply be reduced to the subject.71 The only aspects that could continue to exist would be those that could be subsumed under an abstraction; a unity of an existent or event.72 All of this was done on the virtue of self-preservation: "the endeavor of preserving oneself is the first and only basis of virtue.73 In order to dominate nature, the subject had to reduce nature into itself.
This domination came as a double-edged sword; since the relationship between subject and object is dialectical, the domination of nature implied the domination of one's own nature. This involved removing the aspects of nature that the self saw in itself. Only the thought that destroyed itself was capable of destroying myths.74 The rational, purpose-driven, masculine character of the self needed to emerge from the suppression of the mythical, irrational, objective element of the self.75 This was done through the process of abstraction; the subjective would divorce the elements of the object from itself in order to understand and dominate it. Nature is reduced to abstract classification, while the self becomes a mere abstract entity.76 Since nature and the subject are dialectically related, the domination of nature by the self implies the domination of the self by itself.
The domination of the self by itself culminates into the relationship between self-preservation and self-destruction. Like all dialectical relationships, the identity of self-preservation is constituted in it's nonidentity.77 The domination of the aspect in nature that is found within the subject represents a necessary element of self-destruction in all elements of self-preservation. History from the enlightenment onwards can be seen as an extenuation of increasing self-destruction for the sake of increasing self-preservation. Throughout history, no system of domination has been able to escape this circularity; the master loses participation in the world, while the slaves lose their capacity to enjoy it.78 Humanity's mastery of the self entails that entity that is suppressed and mastered could only be defined as the entity in which self-preservation serves only as a function towards.79 Self-mastery implies a dialectic relationship between self-destruction and self-preservation.
This relationship between self-destruction and self-preservation coalesces to when the two are virtually indistinguishable. The relationship between self-destruction and self-preservation With the advancement of economic forces, this relationship has only been made more apparent. This is because privatized groups create distinctions between human beings; self-preservation has become the reified drive of each individual and became identical with self-destruction.80 By reducing all phenomena into a reified abstraction in order to control it, the subject found itself victim of it's own process. This domination of nature turns against the thinking self, the only thing left is the tautological "I think"; in this process both the subject and the object are nullified.81 In this sense the dialectic is complete; words are no more different than in their pre-subjective, archaic use. With the development of industrial capitalism and division of labour; self-preservation entails this self-alienation through the necessary comportment to the disciplinary apparatus.82 The process has inverted; animism gave things souls while industrialism turned souls into things.83 The process of preserving the self led to the production of calculative and quantitative abstraction; this reason turned on the self and reduced it into a nodal points victim to operations meant to preserve them.84 The enlightened attempt to preserve the self against the nature has made self-destruction and self-preservation virtually indistinguishable; the self has been self-refuted.