National Identities

ISSN: 1460-8944 (Print) 1469-9907 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cnid20

Questioning Authenticity

Hilde Heynen

To cite this article: Hilde Heynen (2006) Questioning Authenticity, National Identities, 8:3,
287-300, DOI: 10.1080/14608940600842607

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National Identities
Vol. 8, No. 3, September 2006, pp. 287
300

Questioning Authenticity
Hilde Heynen

Authenticity is an important category in cultural debates, and has emerged in parallel

with the notion of modernity. Authenticity refers to the idea that something is real
or true, that its outer appearance is in correspondence with its inner being, in contrast
to things that are fake or false or dissimulating. Although the term thus seems to
have a rather unequivocal meaning, its usage evokes quite some paradoxes. This article
focuses on one of these paradoxes: the different notions of authenticity that are at
stake within practices of conservation, on the one hand, and within the modernist
discourse of the Modern Movement, on the other. It shows through a discussion of three
different case studies (the Lever House in New York; the Technical School in Leuven,
Belgium; and the hotel La Concha in San Juan, Puerto Rico) that both forms of
authenticity are often at odds when it comes to the restoration of modernist buildings.
The articles conclusion refers to wider conceptual considerations (e.g., those of David
Lowenthal and Alessandro Ferrara) that might prepare the ground for a more reflective
notion of authenticity.

Keywords: Authenticity; Modernism; Heritage

Introduction
The call for authenticity is one of the important innovations brought about by the
Enlightenment. Jean-Jacques Rousseau criticized the dominant culture of the
eighteenth century because it was sophisticated, artificial, false and presumptuous.
He opposed it to the noble savage, who was direct, honest, spontaneous and in touch
with his inner nature. Rousseaus call for authenticity was taken up by nineteenth-
century Romantics, who hailed the forces of nature, passion and desire, and glorified

Hilde Heynen is professor of architectural theory at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. Her book
publications include: Architecture and Modernity: A Critique (1999), Back from Utopia: The Challenge of the
Modern Movement (co-edited with Hubert-Jan Henket, 2002) and Negotiating Domesticity: The Spatial
Production of Gender in Modern Architecture (co-edited with Gulsum Baydar, 2005). She also publishes articles in
journals such as Harvard Design Magazine and Journal of Architecture . She is currently working on a research
project about Sibyl Moholy-Nagys role in postwar architectural culture. Correspondence to: Hilde Heynen,
KULeuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 1, 300. Leuven. E-mail: hilde.heynen@asro.kuleuven.be

ISSN 1460-8944 (print)/ISSN 1469-9907 (online) # 2006 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/14608940600842607
288 H. Heynen

individuals who lived in accordance with these forces. Modern art and architecture
adopted the notion of authenticity as one of their objectives. The resistance against
the falsity and pretentiousness of nineteenth-century bourgeois culture was indeed
one of the driving elements in the emergence of modernism. As Stefan Muthesius
argues elsewhere in this issue, late nineteenth-century critics and historians
postulated a divide between a period when art and architecture had been authentic
and a period when this was no longer the case*the watershed being around 1840.
Modernist artists and architects wanted to retrieve this authenticity by doing away
with the falsehood and artificiality that was generally perceived to be characteristic of
the Victorian period.
The longing for authenticity thus has been, with ups and downs, an important
impulse in twentieth- and early twenty-first-century culture. At present it seems that,
once again, it takes a central position in cultural debates. As David Boyle (2004)
argues in his recent book Authenticity, there is a growing movement to return to the
natural, the unspun, the real. For Boyle, the current desire for authenticity has to do
with a craving for the real, which he recognises in different elements. Real, he states,
means ethical (as in ethical investments), which follow from peoples will to build up
a moral coherence to their life choices. Real also means natural, as in the preference
for face-to-face human contacts over computer mediated ones. Real also means
honest, simple and unspun. It has to do with the beauty of places as opposed to the
ugliness of non-places, and with rootedness in a tradition or in a place of origin. Real
experience has depth, complexity and three-dimensionality; it is not ubiquitous or
manufactured. And, last but not least, real means human: authenticity thus is rooted
in humanity; it is tolerant and diverse.
Boyle describes the longing for authenticity as the common ground among a range
of heterogenous phenomena that appear in the fields of economy, politics and
culture. His witty and well-written book indeed gives a convincing overview of
different manifestations of the return to the real, but it fails to provide a conceptual
underpinning for this tendency. Authenticity appears as a kind of battleground of
meanings, easily invoked, variably applicable, multifaceted and adaptable to the most
diverse situations. What happens, however, if some of these diverse notions start to
contradict one another?

Different Notions of Authenticity

Such a contradiction becomes apparent in the discussion about the conservation of
Modern Movement buildings. This discussion has been paramount since the
establishment in 1982 of DOCOMOMO, the organisation for the Documentation
and Conservation of Modern Movement buildings (Reinink, 1991; Henket, 1991;
Pawley, 1991; Heynen, 1991). Right from the beginning, it was clear that the
conservation of modernist buildings evokes different problems than that of earlier
architectural masterpieces. One of the reasons for this difference has to do with
technical problems. Modernist buildings were not built for eternity, but were often
 National Identities 289

designed with only a limited lifespan in mind. After this intended lifespan, their
technical integrity was no longer guaranteed; materials could crumble, technical
systems could fail and structural strength could be affected. Conservation of such
buildings therefore requires far-reaching and expensive interventions that are at odds
with the originally intended logic of economy, rationality and functional design. If
one analyses this difficulty, it becomes clear that the practice of conserving modernist
buildings brings about the clash of two different notions of authenticity, between
which it is not easy to find a balance.

Nara Document
Within the field of conservation, the Nara Document on Authenticity (www.inter
national.icomos.org/naradoc_eng.htm) acts as a reference. The Nara Document
intends to formulate a framework that allows one to apply the test of authenticity in
ways which accord full respect to the social and cultural values of all societies. It states
that the essential contribution made by the consideration of authenticity in
conservation practice is to clarify and illuminate the collective memory of humanity.
It thus relates discussions of authenticity to those of cultural identity, cultural
diversity and heritage, affirming that all cultures and societies are rooted in
particular forms and means of tangible and intangible expression which constitute
their heritage, and these should be respected. The Nara Document moreover
underscores the link between values and authenticity:

Conservation of cultural heritage in all its forms and historical periods is rooted in
values attributed to the heritage. Our ability to understand these values depends, in
part, on the degree to which information sources about these values may be
understood as credible or truthful. . . . Authenticity . . . appears as the essential
qualifying factor concerning values.

This is the closest that the Nara Document comes to defining authenticity. Again
it seems that the term does not have a clearly fixed meaning, but that is essentially
a vague, underlying quality that is recognisable, but not easily pinned down. It is
a notion, states the document, that exists in all cultures, although its judgment
may differ from culture to culture. Heritage properties must therefore be considered
and judged within the cultural contexts to which they belong. This assessment can
be based upon a great variety of sources of information, including form and
design, materials and substance, use and function, traditions and techniques, location
and setting, and spirit and feeling. The Nara Document opens up the notion
of heritage and authenticity, making room for intangible cultural expressions, such
as music or traditional skills, as part of cultural heritage. It also stresses the relativity
of judgements of authenticity without, however, denouncing the criterion of
authenticity as the ultimate litmus proof for everything that aspires to the status of
heritage.
290 H. Heynen

Shifts over Time

Within the European practice of conservation, authenticity is usually understood as
referring to the genuineness of the material substance of a monument: an authentic
seventeenth-century church is thus a church that is, in its shape, appearance and
materials, essentially the same as it was when it was newly constructed. A closer look
nevertheless reveals that also the European usage of the term has undergone shifts and
changes. Lucy Worsley (2004) discusses them in an interesting study of the history of
Bolsover Castle in England. Bolsover Castle is a seventeenth-century mock-medieval
castle built for the Cavendish family. Worsley shows how it has been treated in very
divergent ways by successive owners, tenants and caretakers, but always with a
striving towards authenticity.
The seventeenth-century builders intended the castle to represent an imaginary
medieval age: it was meant as a romantic recreation of a ruined Norman keep that
had previously stood on its site. In the eighteenth century, Lady Oxford carried out a
programme of unobtrusive repairs and extensions*her main motivation being
family piety and the desire to guarantee the continuity of the castle as a family home.
In the Romantic nineteenth century, Bolsover Castle was treated as a picturesque
ruin, capable of recalling the memory of the (imaginary) Olden Time when
(supposedly) British democracy was created and social harmony flourished. This
intensely romantic view was not considered incompatible with providing provisions
for modern comfort when and where the need arose: cutting through walls, removing
panelling or adding gas burners.
The most significant changes nevertheless took place in the 1970s and 1990s, when
conservationist tried to restore the house not to a state as it might have been (the
aspiration of the Romantics), but to a state that represented, as closely as possible,
how it really was in the seventeenth century. Even these efforts, however, led to quite
different results because more adequate knowledge and techniques were available in
the 1990s than in the 1970s. Both twentieth-century restorations left the house rather
bare, with accurate recreations of decorative finishing, but without furnishings.
Worsley (2004, pp. 145
146) concludes that: Authenticity in each case appears to
present the unobtainable*the medieval past, a familys former greatness, a time of
idyllic social unity, or an unmediated experience of original historic fabric. She thus
agrees with David Lowenthals assumption that one should recognise the impact of
the present on the past, and that heritage necessitates a continuous interaction, which
fuses past with present (Lowenthal, 1985, p. 410). The interpretation of authenticity
that comes to the fore as dominant in the twentieth century*the attempt to re-
create a situation that is as close as possible, in materiality as well as in appearance, to
the actual historical origin of a building*is difficult to reconcile with the
requirements for restoring modernist buildings. This has to do with the fact that
the Modern Movement itself attached great importance to the idea of authenticity.
The modernists authenticity, however, does not coincide with that of the
conservationists.
 National Identities 291

Modernist Authenticity
In 1898, Adolf Loos denounced the appetite of his co-citizens for the palace-like
architecture of their apartment buildings. He calls Vienna a Potemkin city,
comparing it to the villages of canvas and pasteboard that the cunning favourite of
Catherine the Great built in the Ukraine to transform a visual desert into a flowering
landscape for the eyes of Her Majesty. Loos calls upon his fellow citizens to turn their
backs to the Potemkin attitude and to embrace honesty and unpretentiousness:

Poverty is no disgrace. Not everyone can come into the world the lord of a feudal
estate. But to pretend to ones fellow men that one has such an estate is ridiculous
and immoral. After all, should we be ashamed to live in a rental apartment in a
building with many others who are our social equals? Should we be ashamed of the
fact that there are materials that are too expensive for us to build with? Should we
be ashamed to be nineteenth-century men and not men who want to live in a
building whose architectural style belongs to an earlier age? (Loos, 1982, p. 96)

Henry van de Velde also had a preference for things that directly communicate
what they are, without false pretensions. He evoked the work of the engineer, who
relied upon reason and calculation to create forms that are beautiful. The basic
principle, according to Van de Velde (1975, p. 33), was that objects or things become
beautiful when they are what they should be. He referred to locomotives, steamers,
machines, bridges, lamps and surgical instruments*all modern inventions
that attracted by their beauty: All these articles are beautiful because they are exactly
what they should be and their forms become even more beautiful when they are made
out of beautiful raw materials which have been properly treated (Van de Velde, 1975,
p. 33).
Le Corbusier adopted a similar tone in his 1923 seminal book Towards a New
Architecture. He hailed ocean liners, airplanes and automobiles for being in line with
the new spirit of the epoch. This spirit was one of construction and of synthesis,
guided by a clear conception. It was inspired by industrialisation and aspired towards
order. The new spirit was at odds with the styles that were so dear to the architects,
for these styles were nothing but surface decoration of facades and drawing rooms.
They had nothing to do with the essential qualities of buildings and houses. As a
consequence, architecture was a field that did not yet participate in the real style of
the epoch. This style was to be found elsewhere: in fountain pens, telephones, trunks,
safety razors, limousines, steamships and airplanes*all objects that were true to
their construction and their function. Only when architecture would learn to also be
in tune with its time*when it would build houses as machines to live in*only
then would it participate in the great adventure of the new spirit (Le Corbusier, 1976,
p. 86).
Although the protagonists of the Modern Movement in architecture differed
somewhat in the specificities of their opinions, there seemed to be a common
denominator that was shared by many. This common denominator denounced the
eclecticism of the nineteenth century for its inherent falsity and pretentiousness, and
292 H. Heynen

advocated honesty in the use of materials. The outer appearance of buildings should
reflect their inner construction and should be determined by their function. Modern
architects should, as much as possible, use the new materials and technologies that
were made available through industrialisation. Historical style references and
decoration were superfluous, not in tune with the time, and hence to be avoided.
Architecture should provide a straightforward, honest answer to the requirements
and challenges of modern life.
Walter Benjamin gave this conviction a philosophical underpinning in his essay
Experience and Poverty, written in 1933 (Benjamin, 1999). Benjamin argued that in
this new era the link with tradition had broken, and that the result was a poverty of
experience. This condition was not to be lamented, but should be seized on as a new
opportunity for humanity to make a completely fresh start. It could be seen as
bringing about a new barbarism*an untamed, direct, unpretentious new attitude
that refused adornments because they were false and pretentious. This new barbarism
in fact entailed a victory over a culture whose humanism was based upon false
pretensions. The most lucid avant-garde artists, according to Benjamin, such as
Brecht, Loos, Klee and Scheerbart, understood the need for this new beginning. Their
business was it to formulate a new barbarism that was the only appropriate answer to
the challenges of technology.
For the modernist architects and avant-garde artists, therefore, authenticity had to
do with the courage to face up to the challenges of modernity. It meant
acknowledging the poverty of the times, without covering it up. One should refrain
therefore from any unnecessary, superfluous decorations and strive towards sobriety,
purity, nakedness. This authenticity was also seen as the hallmark of real modern art
and architecture, which differed from the impure, easy-going and comfortable forms
of kitsch (Greenberg, 1939).

Telling Cases
The modernist credo of authenticity implies that buildings should be conceived of as
straightforward answers to the requirements of modernity, that they should be up-to-
date in terms of materials and technologies, and that their aesthetics should comply
with the rationality and abstraction for which the times were calling. The three cases
that follow embody different aspects of this modernist authenticity, which clash in
different ways with the authenticity requirements of conservationists.

The Lever House

Suzanne Stephens (2003) discusses the recent restoration of New Yorks Lever House
in terms of authenticity. The Lever House (1952) was the first glass curtain-walled
skyscraper to go up in New York. It was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrills
(SOM) Gordon Bunshaft for a soap company that wanted to erect a symbol of
hygienic modernity. In 1983, the building was designated a historic landmark to
 National Identities 293

protect it against demolition plans by new owners. In 1998, it changed hands again
and this time plans were made to restore it, for the building showed the wear and tear
of its years. Especially the buildings curtain wall posed problems. The curtain wall
was replaced according to a design by engineer Gordon H. Smith, with SOM as
consultants. Smith advised a wholesale substitution of the original skin, with new
glass*green-tinted and single-paned as in the original, but heat-strengthened
instead of annealed. Most parts of the underlying curtain-wall structure of carbon
steel have been kept, but a new aluminium receiver system supplements the old. So
the Lever House has shed its skin, to appear, snake-like, with a new one that closely
resembles the original.
The interior received a face-lift too. Architect William T. Georgis was responsible
for the restoration and redesign of public areas of the building. He wanted to retain
the 1950s aura of the original spaces without however resorting to slavish
reconstruction. This would have been difficult anyhow, since most of the original
furnishings had been lost. Stephens considers that Georgis and his colleagues did a
good job and managed to come up with a result that stays within the realised and
unrealised intentions of the original SOM design. By staying within the spirit of
the realized and unrealized intentions, [the new owner] brought back the gleam of
the original and enhanced the richness of the ground-floor spaces (Stephens, 2003,
p. 128). She concludes that one has to think differently about authenticity in
preserving a modern machine-made building versus the handcrafted sort (Stephens,
2003, p. 128). It is clear that in a case like that of the Lever House it does not make
sense to preserve by all means the genuine construction materials. It is much more in
tune with the original intentions of its architects to take advantage of technological
innovations that are now available. What is most important, states Stephens, is that
the level of quality and attention to materials, details and proportions, is up to the
challenge posed by the old building. If the architectural quality of the restoration
matches with that of the original building, one can truly call it authentic in the most
modern (or newest) manner.

Technical School in Leuven

The re-conversion of a modernist school in Leuven, Belgium, into a municipal library
also generated lively debates about authenticity (Jacobs, 2000). The school was one of
the last buildings designed by Henry van de Velde (1863
1957). It was constructed
between 1936 and 1942 in the middle of a dense urban block in Leuven, reaching out
to two urban streets. Its main entrance was situated in a busy and narrow shopping
street, quite unobtrusively because of its modest dimensions and apparently
conventional materials (ceramic tiles and blue stone). The other street facade, on
the opposing side of the urban block, was spatially more complex, wider and had a
more monumental character, although it was articulated in the same materials.
Between the two wings facing these parallel streets, the school building extended in
three storeys, following a strict orthogonal grid of wide corridors between classrooms
294 H. Heynen

Figure 1 Technical School in Leuven by Henri van de Velde. Interior view of the original
situation. (Photographer unknown).

and workshops located around two rectangular patios. Interior and exterior walls
were mostly made up of glass panels (with the exception of the street facades). This
gave the building an extraordinary sense of transparency. It thus was one of these rare
modernist buildings that were decidedly urban in their interconnection with the
surrounding fabric and well contextualised in terms of materials and spatial
connections, while still living up to the modernist adagios of transparency, structural
clarity and rational use of materials.
When the technical school decided to leave these premises in 1984, the building
escaped a likely prospect of demolition thanks to a campaign set up by local architects
and academics. The city then decided to buy the building in order to reconvert it into
a library and municipal archives. The commission was given to architect Georges
Baines. In the meantime, the building had been classified: the street facades as
monuments and the rest of the building as a historical cityscape. The latter
qualification implied that changes might occur, but that they were bound to respect
the essential qualities of the existing building. It soon became clear that the buildings
physical condition was too decrepit for its new function: the concrete skeleton was
damaged and could not be trusted to bear the new, heavy loads of books and archival
documents. The skeleton needed to be reconstructed in a concrete of better quality in
order to comply with the requirements of stability and future flexibility. The spatial
division of classrooms, workshops and corridors was also altered in order to better fit
the new functions. The structure and space were thus adapted to the new set of
 National Identities 295

Figure 2 Technical School in Leuven by Henri van de Velde, now reconverted into a
library (reconversion architect Georges Baines). Photographer: Paul Laes.

requirements, but these modifications, according to the architect, always respected

the formal logic and essential qualities of the Van de Velde building.
Hardcore conservationists, however, were not happy with the whole process
because they thought that a restoration project lost its credibility when the original
material substance of the building was done away with. According to their
conventional wisdom, reconstructions are always falsifications, and therefore
absolutely taboo. Indeed, the Venice Charter (1964; www.icomos.org/venice_char-
ter.html) calls for restoration practices that allow for a clear differentiation between
the authentic parts of a restored building, and the parts where the damage could not
be repaired, but necessitated reconstruction. The latter parts should be clearly
recognisable through the use of different materials, colours or detailing. This
guideline was not followed in the case of the library since it was argued that Van de
Velde himself would have opted for the rational choice of reconstructing the skeleton
with better concrete. Luc Verpoest, a heritage specialist who initiated the campaign
that saved the building, took sides with the architects who decided for reconstruction.
According to him, the buildings authenticity is still there because the restoration
architects respected the spirit of Van de Velde:
296 H. Heynen

All these new changes *functional, constructional and formal *clearly illustrate
the designers approach to the restoration of Van de Veldes historical building. . . .
[T]he old building has simply been given more space to be itself. The form,
construction and function of the new additions are unmistakably new. There is no
possibility of confusion with the historical building, and more than this, the new
architecture, in all its modesty, makes all the characteristics and qualities of the old
building visible once more. Georges Baines and his colleagues have built a building
by Henry van de Velde. (Verpoest, 2000, p. 67)

This means that, in this case, just as in the previous one, the conservationists
authenticity has been traded in for a modernist one*implying that the building can
still be called an authentic one.

La Concha Hotel, Puerto Rico

The La Concha Hotel in Puerto Rico presents us with a very clear example of the
clash between the heritage and the modernist understanding of authenticity. John
B. Hertz (2002) draws attention to this conflict in an interesting contribution to the
Journal of Architectural Education. The confrontation is brought about in this case
because of the troubled relation of Puerto Rico to its colonial past and its more recent
struggle with modernity. It is worth quoting Hertz in full:

The search for an authentic architectural expression in much of Latin America

reflects the confrontation between the colonial period, when transformation
occurred through a wholesale substitution of cultural values, and that of the
recent past, which embodies the struggle with modernity. The pressures of
contemporary development on that search, working through a misreading of
history, can result in works that are more than inappropriate. A case in point is the
project designed to replace the modernist icon, the Hotel La Concha in San Juan,
with a more authentic complex with Hispanic references. However, the authentic
expression of local culture is found in the modern building from the recent past,
rather than in the historic model being proposed, in spite of the claims by its
designers that it is more Puerto Rican. (Hertz, 2002, p. 220)

Puerto Rico had lived under Spanish domination for four centuries, when the
Americans took over in 1898 after the Spanish-American War. The Americans issued
a massive construction campaign in the island in order to upgrade its infrastructure
and public services. The preferred style for this huge building programme was a kind
of Spanish Revival, which the Americans used in order to underscore the difference
between Puerto Rico and their homeland. This assimilation of Hispanic traditions
into an American architectural expression, Hertz argues, reflected the lack of any
serious interest in the actual cultural values of Puerto Rico, and offers little more than
a picturesque background to act out their political and economic interests. This
changed, however, in the period after the Second World War, when prominent local
architects took a conscious decision to develop a version of modernist architecture
that would be consistent with the needs of climate and site*an architecture for the
 National Identities 297

tropics. This development is prompted by the arrival of two modernist architects on

the island: Richard Neutra, who was only to stay for two years, and Henry Klumb, the
German disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, who became a permanent resident. Both
modernists had a notable influence on local architects, such as Osvaldo Toro and
Miguel Ferrer, who were to design the La Concha Hotel. The work of Toro and Ferrer
was, according to Hertz, part of a heroic effort of the Puerto Rican society to
transform itself and to come to terms with modernity. Puerto Rico, unlike other Latin
American countries, chose the path of change through reform. It looked for progress
and emancipation without a revolutionary change in its political and economic
structures.
The modernist buildings that were to underscore this option were privately
operated hotels built with public (American) funds that catered to well-to-do
foreigners. According to Hertz, the Hilton Hotel (1949) and the La Concha Hotel
(1958), both designed by Toro and Ferrer, were the first and the most notable of these
buildings. They also received considerable international recognition, with La Concha,
for instance, making the cover of Progressive Architecture in August 1959. La Concha
was clearly a modernist building, but it also displayed several features that bear
reference to its context. It was organised around a central interior patio like the
traditional urban housing typology found in San Juan. Its articulated brise-soleils
recalled traditional shuttered galleries and it disposed of a mirador on the roof that
functions as a lookout space. In the words of Hertz (2002, p. 224): The fusion of
architectural roots and morphologies derived from Spanish origin found on the
island and the vocabulary of modernism within a tropical setting created an
expression appropriate to the uniqueness of Puerto Rico.
The La Concha Hotel can thus be considered an example of what Tzonis and
Lefaivre (2001) call critical regionalism: it is a tropical architecture that builds upon
elements from the local tradition while adopting a self-examining and self-
questioning attitude towards that tradition. Like Minette da Silva and Lina Bo
Bardi, whose work is discussed by Lefaivre and Tzonis as exemplary for a tropical
critical regionalism, Toro and Ferrer developed a vocabulary that was modern and
regional, accepting the technological advancements coming from the West while
keeping the best of traditional forms. The La Concha Hotel therefore embodies a
form of authenticity that is in line with modernist requirements as well as with the
aspiration to acknowledge the local climate and context.
However, this highly interesting building no longer fits into the logics of global
tourism. It has become an economic liability and its present owners want to demolish
it. The idea is to replace it with a convention centre built in a revivalist style that
supposedly reflects Puerto Ricos Spanish heritage and is reminiscent of old San Juan.
Such a project, it is believed, is much bettered suited to attract tourists because it
complies with their expectations of a Hispanic tropical image*regardless of the fact
that this image constructs a false identity. Hertz (2002, p. 226) concludes:
298 H. Heynen

The architecture*which to the casual, uneducated eye appears to be a more

authentic expression of Puerto Rican culture *appears to be the imported
architecture of colonialism, whereas the design that appears to be foreign is an
authentic expression by local practitioners of an appropriate architecture that
expresses a specific place and time in the struggle with modernity on the island. The
proposed . . . project, in its use of a revival style . . . is the resurgence of an invented
architecture brought to the island by the United States in its efforts at colonization
some one hundred years ago. Rather than honouring and reaffirming the specific
Spanish tradition of Puerto Rico, it reaffirms the continued colonial state of the
island, a political condition that the voters in Puerto Rico totally rejected during
the most recent plebiscite on its status.

In this case, the modernist authenticity recognised and supported by Hertz seems to
be incompatible with the tourist expectations of authenticity that have to be met if
one follows a purely commercial logic. These tourist expectations have been informed
by a heritage industry that sanctions the very old or, in the absence of the very old,
the illusion of the very old.

Conclusion
As David Lowenthal (1985, p. xxiv) argues, the urge to preserve the remnants of the
past is in part a reaction to anxieties generated by the amnesia caused by modernity:
We preserve because the pace of change and development has attenuated a legacy
integral to our identity and well-being. The rapid transformations of modernity have
made the past into a foreign country and have given rise to nostalgia for the lost
unity, harmony and authenticity that supposedly were part of it. In this sense,
authenticity is always already located somewhere else. It is not something that we
automatically dispose of, it is something that has been lost and should be retrieved*
or at least that is the dominant modernist feeling about authenticity.
The longing for authenticity however takes on different forms. Whereas the
modernists look for it in new works that attest to the poverty and abstraction of
modernity, others rather locate it in the remnants of the past themselves. For
conservationists, therefore, the genuineness of the material substance of monuments
and other relics is the decisive factor. Nevertheless, as Lowenthal (1985, p. xxiii)
points out, in the eyes of the general public: It is not the original that seems
authentic but current views of what the past ought to have looked like. Heritage
and history, as he argues in another book (Lowenthal, 1998), rely on different modes
of persuasion. Whereas history seeks to convince by truth, relying on historical
documents and firm evidence, heritage exaggerates and omits, invents and forgets,
and thrives on ignorance and error. The serious guidelines of good conservationist
practice, therefore, formulated in the Venice Charter and in the Nara Document on
Authenticity, do not protect against the pitfalls of authenticity. They try to keep
heritage within the framework of history, but given the ultimately different objectives
and methods of both ways of dealing with the past, this attempt at reconciliation is
somewhat fortuitous. Within the heritage industry, authenticity is apparently
 National Identities 299

doomed to be an illusion because the tourist mode of experiencing authenticity

necessarily brings it into a frame that is artificial, programmed and spun (Urry, 1990;
McCannell, 1999).
These paradoxes should, however, not bring us to the point where we give up on
the desire for authenticity. It remains one of the important driving forces of our
culture, and it is a category we cannot do without when thinking about identity.
Alessandro Ferrara even takes authenticity on as a central notion to rethink the
project of modernity. His book Reflective Authenticity (Ferrara, 1998) suggests that
the notion of reflective authenticity offers the key to a new way of conceiving
modernity that allows for universal validation without ignoring the need for
pluralism and difference. His conception of authenticity is non-essentialist in that
he does not understand authenticity as based upon inalienable, essential core, but
rather as a project to be submitted to intersubjective judgment. Authenticity thus has
to do with how a person relates to himself or herself, and with how others perceive
this relation with the self. That is why he understands authenticity as reflective.
Authenticity is thus related to identity *yet again, identity is not understood as
essentialist, but rather as the unique way in which an individual brings together his or
her difference with what is shared with others. He discusses coherence, vitality,
depth and maturity as dimensions of an individual identity that is authentic (Ferrara,
1998, pp. 80
107), and applies the same categories to collective identities (Ferrara,
1998, pp. 112
126).
Such reflections might help us to reconsider the notion of authenticity as it
operates in different fields. Ferraras categories of coherence, vitality, depth and
maturity are closer to modernist authenticity than to the heritage one. His focus on
intersubjectivity, on the other hand, reminds us not to forget about the importance of
symbols and icons that are widely recognised and shared among a large community
(such as a nation). It seems plausible to assume that authenticity as such is an
unobtainable goal, but that the search for it*with all the paradoxes it entails*
nevertheless remains a crucial element in our quest for identity.

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