The Failure of Authenticity; Metaanalysis; Money

In Horning's analysis of this post, a broadly Marxist critique of "ordered concepts themselves" is arrayed against the production of specifically individual meanings in light of the "internet-centric" nature of the construction of identity, both in terms of one's presentation and one's internal appropriation of experience. Horning expands Carles' excavation of spaces beneath notions of utility and personal autonomy in the broadest sense, pointing to the essential frailty of identity itself, observing: "integration is the chip on the table as the roulette wheel of semiotics spins," placing the in-divid(e)-ual as powerless, with legitimation endlessly deferred. That Carles serves to further destabilize this legitimization with his analysis is only the capstone in the floating arch of wispy identity.

Beyond the simple attempt by "tweens" at asserting their identity in the immediate and vast social spaces of cyberculture is a pervasive set of accompanying pressures and goals built-in to all social interaction. The legerdemain of authenticity is employed constantly here, in tension with a simultaneous urge to expressions of self-awareness, particularly strains of metaanalysis-as-pastime of contemporary alt-indie¹-subculture. Even putative attempts at pure, organic expressions-of-authenticity are couched within mediums, mediums which have become built to expand personal power, veiled though such attempts may be. The "youtube douchebag" describes her motivations thusly

I thought "why not? i want to join in the fun!" So here's my version....What's yours?!!!

breezily belying the effort built-in to the production of the video and the pervasive branding that dominates every social act (and every act is, of course, a necessarily social act). There are no people, there are only personae. Carles himself takes part in this branding, albeit with the sheen of a greater apparent self-consciousness than his typical targets (a will to a vein of power in itself, the urge to control the language of discourse). Not only is Carles a philosopher of alternative languages, his work finds itself within a broad Deluzian socius, simultaneously commenting-on and taking-part-in the construction of identities, channeling flows of desire into productive strains of discourse via the methodology of analysis and meta-analysis. Particularly, Carles has tapped into the contemporary urge to meta-analysis as a way of life. Via pouvoir, Carles implodes the urge to secrecy, interiority, and silence. Horning's layer of commentary above Carles' reifies this trend in the language of Marxist Theory, finally spiraling down to the essential Jasperian anxiety of a failed approach to Existenz: "All efforts at vanity imply the Other who threatens always with psychic annihilation." One is in the world, eo ipso, one is at the mercy of the world. The more one cultivates/discovers extensions of the self within the world (i.e. power), the more one depends on the Other.

Horning concludes with a description of authenticity a corollary of money: "one can fall back on the traditional mode of legitimation in capitalist society: money." Though authenticity is commonly presented in opposition to the overt gathering of forms of concrete capital, under Horning's interpretations, authenticity is always feigned authenticity, especially in late-stage development of identity within the social world. "Under capitalism, authenticity is ultimately married to the cash nexus," Horning writes. Authenticity equals power; money equals power; authenticity becomes a vehicle for the accumulation of both power and money.

1.Carles has at several points undertaken self-conscious philosophic consideration of the meanings of these terms via both denotation and implication e.g. here