P[03]Discourse
on Trends

Where are our identities best expressed? Will we reach a point in time where a modified reality is normative? Have we reached that point already? Instead of naively trying to answer these questions, this project entailed an engagement with, analysis of, and critical reflection upon the key contemporary discourses on authenticity as they are manifested in culture, to map future scenarios and trends on identity.

[01]
A shift towards fluidity in the discourse of authenticity in gender, sexual, and racial identity is generating a new structure of power and knowledge.

[02]
As technology continues to dilute the lines between physical and digital space and persona, this shift towards more fluid behaviours and attitudes will become a macro trend in other arenas, thus reshaping our conception of ourselves.

[03]
Different levels of acceptance or refusal of this shift and the technologies that bring it will generate archetypical identities, each one offering attached market opportunities.

[01]Authenticity as a Floating Signifier

How do new discourses on authenticity appear as a consequence of modernisation, and how do they influence the evolution of other discourses within the same epistemological regime?

Emulating Foucauldian genealogical research in a variety of disciplines ranging from music and politics to arts and architecture, this insight led to the detection of shared patterns generated by the correlation of innovation, modernisation, and technological disruption with the generation of new discourses – and how the authenticity criteria of different demographics influence the acceptance or refusal of these new discourses as a regime of truth.

In this process, the receptor has to impersonate himself in the subject that a particular discourse produces. Subjects that match the self-conceptualisation of the receptor are approved as authentic. Those which do not match the self-conceptualisation are refused as inauthentic. To be accepted as authentic, the subjects which a discourse produces have to match the self-conception of the receptor, the epistemic common sense of its time.

Tool 1 defines innovation (modernisation) as the disruptive element that generates changes in the epistemic common sense allowing the production and adoption of new discourses. To forecast what authenticity could look like in a future episteme, one must define the disruptive innovations affecting our world and the new possibilities that the mentioned innovations would produce. In-depth research on innovations such as virtual reality, augmented reality, nanorobotics suggests that in the near future, the line that separates the virtual and physical world will blur, and with it self identity and the perception of what is authentic. This epistemic change corresponds to a process of assimilation as represented in the evolved version of Tool 1

In addition to the above-mentioned tool, a parallelism with the evolution of the discourses of gender identity was used to forecast the general trend on fluidity as the core value of the new episteme. While new surgical techniques on sexual reassignment generated discourses on gender performativity, new techniques on virtual and augmented reality and nanorobotics will enable new discourses on authenticity as identity evolves into something that transcends physical conditions and limitations, and blurs into the digital world.

If a new regime of truth on authenticity and identity is built around the concept of fluidity between the physical and the digital, a multiplicity of secondary discourses will appear as reaction or as fetishisation of these two worlds. This overlapping generates four extreme subjects with different perceptions of authenticity, each one offering attached market opportunities.