ABSTRACT
Concerned with uncovering fundamental truths, essences, and origins, authenticity is a key concept in disciplines ranging from philosophy, anthropology, and music to psychology and law. Yet, it is in the practice and theorization of reenactment that authenticity holds the greatest sway. Lacking the markers of corroboration enjoyed by traditional historiography, reenactment adopts authenticity as both its subject matter and its object of inquiry. Reenactment seeks to advance historical understanding through an authentic simulation of past objects, events, practices, and experiences, yet its epistemological claims rest on the selfsame assertion of authenticity. This puts a troubling circularity at the heart of reenactment’s authenticity imperative. As a form of social practice and an emerging academic field, reenactment calls for a method that integrates inductive and deductive approaches, even as it latterly upholds the critical potential of embodied and affective knowledge predicated on the authenticity of the (individual) performing subject (body and embodiment; performance and performativity; emotion). Authenticity will thus pose fundamental challenges for the future of reenactment studies (introduction) as the field comes to articulate falsifiable criteria for the production of historical meaning and the evidence upon which this might be based.
