Queens of Hearts

Contemporary culture is caught in a representational bind: fascinated by—and yet tired of—its tendency towards artifice and involution, whilst simultaneously attracted to—and yet sceptical of—the idea of the authentic. The hermeneutical confusion brought about by this self-identity crisis has given rise to a semiotic indistinction around artificiality and authenticity, leaving the observer trapped not by their bipolarity, but caught within their layers as they interleave. This essay explores the ramifications of this through an examination of the relationship between Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and Will Self's Dorian: An Imitation (2002). Identifying the imitative intent of Self's rewrite as problematic, the essay situates the twentieth-century's shift towards an ethic of private authenticity over sincerity as indicative of a significant change in self and social understanding. However, the demands and desires of late capitalism have made it increasingly difficult to isolate what that authenticity might mean, and what credibility can be attached to it. In its examination of Self's portrayal of Princess Diana's life and death, it argues that for all its importance as a signifier of value, contemporary authenticity is hopelessly caught within the representational order of the artificial. Notes1Shields, 5.2Byatt.3Waters; Barnes; Mantel; Mitchell.4Wood, 8.5Collins.6Taylor, Ethics of Authenticity, 25.7In Reflective Authenticity: Rethinking the Project of Modernity, Alessandro Ferrara explains: “In Greek ‘authentikós’ derives from ‘eautón’ and ‘theto’ where ‘theto’ is etymologically related to ‘thesis’. Thus ‘authentic’ refers to individuals who ‘posit themselves’ or, more freely, ‘set themselves as a thesis’” (15).8Critchley, 51.9Braidotti.10Guignon, 51.11Golomb, 7, 11.12Trilling, 12.13Ibid., 11.14Golomb, 11.15Read, 58.16Carman, 229.17Ball, 4.18Kiberd, 13.19Wilde, “The Critic as Artist,” 50.20Ibid., 53.21The shaping of a latent authenticity is further elucidated in Oscar Wilde's essays. In “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” Wilde argues that great artists and thinkers are “real men” (391) because they recognise that self-realisation is the means of perfecting the individual's consciousness. Similarly, in “The Critic as Artist,” “not doing but being, and not being merely, but becoming” (45) is the ultimate goal of life. Such an emergence of self is achievable only through the contemplative life, for “self-culture is the true ideal of man” (Wilde, “The Critic as Artist,” 47).22Wilde, Dorian Gray, 25.23Ibid., 27.24Ibid., 127.25Ibid., 20.26Kiberd, 13.27Taylor, A Secular Age, 475.28Jean-Paul Sartre would contest even this. In Being and Nothingness Sartre contends that: “the essential structure of sincerity does not differ from that of bad faith since the sincere man constitutes himself as what he is in order not to be it. ... Total, constant sincerity as a constant effort to adhere to oneself is by nature a constant effort to dissociate oneself from oneself” (88).29Self, Dorian, 178.30Ibid., 75.31Ibid., 68.32Ibid., 46.33Ibid., 47.34Ibid., 30.35Ibid., 53.36Ibid., 64.37Ibid., 66.38Ibid., 12.39Bolter and Grusin, 54.40For a discussion of the point de capiton as the fixing agent in a significatory code see Žižek, Sublime Object, 87.41Self, Dorian, 64.42Self, Feeding Frenzy, 269.43Self, Dorian, 108.44Self, Feeding Frenzy, 270.45See for instance: Paglia; Attwood; Showalter, Inventing Herself.46Wilson, 117.47Cox, 325.48Braidotti.49See in particular: Braidotti; Showalter, “Storming the Wintry Palace”; Hey.50Davies, 23.51Yebra, 20.52Davies, 20.53Bowlby, 179.54Ibid., 180.55Ibid., 191.56Žižek, For They Know Not, xxxvi. This charisma corresponds well to the aura which obtains to the authentic object in Walter Benjamin's “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” and inheres in the object's “unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (214).57Self, Dorian, 266–7.58Norman Fairclough identifies a sense of the authentic as fundamental to the political project of New Labour during this period: “sustaining the power of the enigma depends upon a continuing sense of the authenticity of Blair, the ‘normal person’, a continuing trust in Blair as a person” (118).59Self, Dorian, 266.60The idealism that surrounded the New Labour project received a series of blows from the motor-racing entrepreneur Bernie Ecclestone donation scandal of 1997, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 war with Iraq, and though these are clearly not within the world view of the narrative, they will almost certainly be within the frame of historical reference for many of the novel's readers. Self's broader point that the optimism of 1997 was quickly burnt out remains apposite.61Self, Dorian, 274.62Time and again in the reportage concerning the public response to Diana's death there is an emphasis on the sheer quantity of commemorative offering reinforcing a sense of the unsettling excess and unboundedness that the event provoked. See as an example Jack.63De Zengotita, 10.64Julian Barnes quoted in Jack.65Self, Dorian, 274

Aesthetics · Art · Artificiality · Epistemology · Gray (unit · Literature · Modernity · Psychoanalysis · Sign (mathematics · Sociology · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Postmodernism in Literature and Education · Psychology · Philosophy

• On Being Authentic

  Charles Guignon•On Being Authentic•2004

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• A Secular Age

  Open Access•Charles Taylor•Secular Age•2007

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• Diana

  Donna Mcneil Cox, Donna Cox•Journal of Gender Studies•1999

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• Same Old Story? The tale of Diana, Princess of Wales

  Feona Attwood•Journal of Gender Studies•1999

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