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Wednesday
Jul282010

Praise comes in many forms

Glen Payne reviews The Authenticity Hoax:

Now, who could be better positioned in the modern status-seeking game than a Canadian philosophy PhD publishing credible arguments in an attractive hard-cover book that all those self-professed authenticity-seekers are just Veblenian status-seekers (swapping “conspicuous authenticity” for “conspicuous consumption”) who would see how absurd they were if they just read their Rousseau more carefully? Potter’s book strikes me as annoying the same way it would annoy me if I were running a marathon and the guy running next to me spent the race defending intricate theories about how competitive sports were ill-conceived nonsense and then sprinted ahead near the finish to cross the line before me.

Awesome.