Abstract:
In this article the author discusses the concept of culture and its several uses drawing on them a structurally tensioned conception based on the ideas of authenticity and spuriousness. Such a conception offers comparative means for the description and analysis of diverse social and cultural experiences. As a cultural critique, the author focuses on the ways cultural spuriousness distinguishes modern Western societies, expressing the modernist criticism of modernity. The focus of the article is the criticism of North American society in the first decades of 20th century. However, he points out that cultural authenticity and spuriousness are not necessarily associated with more or less developed forms of social and cultural life. Neither are they associated with levels of economic and technological development. Cultural spuriousness is not exclusively associated with modernity. He argues that cultural authenticity is present in forms of collective life that necessarily goes through the individual experience and may be found either in the so called primitive societies or along the history of Western societies.
Keywords:
Culture; Language; Individual; Authenticity; Culture Criticism; Modernity