Member Review
Review by
Andrew S, Reviewer
‘the theory — no matter how bonkers — could be just three clicks away’
It’s not easy to pigeonhole Alice Sherwood’s Authenticity. Through this sequence of opinion pieces runs Sherwood’s essayist’s gab. There is no denying it. Her prose sparkles with precision language—argot, fedora, mea culpas, and noisome. She floats on a higher plane, projecting a god-like grasp of all things, one-moment economicsy and evolutionary, arty the next. However, the book is not quite the philosophy and sociology it pretends to be. It is more like a quiz. The answers seem straightforward, then, gotcha!, they trip you up.
Erudition typically casts shadows where personal views can lurk unobtrusively. Unlike a deity, but like a minister of religious doctrine, Sherwood doesn’t question the authenticity of her opinions, and, finally, they come to light as expressions of empire and prejudice. Typically, into a flavoursome soup of celebrity, Sherwood tosses more serious seasoning. With Andy Warhol, a little quotation from Tim Wu. But it’s not straightforward. Wu quotes William James, who reflects that our lives, and so, our ideas, are less our own than we imagine. Sherwood marshals this circuit of quotation and fiction, anecdote and facts—readers would not catch them if left to their own devices. Sherwood’s examples are eclectic. However, their choice is insidious, flattering the luxury of insight, opportunity, and investment, a rules-based order. She slams down, but never hard, on opportunists seeking to flout trademark and Copywrite. She champions the democracy that promises equality, ignoring that such a social order privileges the elites who can afford health, soundly stitched clothing and accessories, and expensive art.
As the book progresses, Sherwood becomes more vitriolic. She goes from funny tales to a personal story, where, affectingly, she reveals vulnerability. It’s all warm and funny, with a soft spot for the odd deceptive psychopath. But then there is Shnapple, and Sherwood gets into an invective stride against subterfuge in the everyday. She is affronted that the drink won’t disclose the source of its natural flavour. Previously, with more esoteric curiosities, the undisclosed touch of an artist’s assistant, or a fake blood test, the stories were examples of the inauthentic, but now it seems she cares about authenticity. Where the distresses brought by a con artist, a maternal surrogate, or a high-value forgery are bumps in the road, the missing apple in the apple fizz is another register of despicableness. Strangely, her meticulous research, bristling with footnotes, evaporates in the brief chapter about the fight against malaria. The section feels like publicity sponsored by big pharma. I was curious to know the source of the assession that “The majority of the world’s ’ Bad Phama’ comes from China.” But its footnote leads to the line, “Although India is a major player too.” It gives the impression that the chapter is a racist tirade, inauthentic rubbish. Sherwood discredits Mao’s drive for the unification of medication, the best of both worlds, Western and vernacular while espousing its efficacy in finding a cure for malaria. Previously Sherwood wrote of patents and copywrites, but the cure for malaria doesn’t fit with a litigious mindset, guarantees of ownership, and the protection of future profits. The malarial drug is gifted to the world. This disregard for holding on to property is, for Sherwood, an anomaly. What captures her imagination is profiteering, trade secrets, hoarding medical discoveries, caring for power elites. Her vague critique stabs at the Chinese as ‘morally culpable’ because they allow their discovery to be free. In Sherwood’s narrative, the democratisation of discovery and altruism shorten the effective life of the drug. With even cursory scrutiny, her story is spurious.
Previously, Chloroquine was the substance used to control malaria. It was first synthesised by the Bayer laboratories in Germany in 1934 but wasn’t deployed as a malarial medication until ten years later. Chloroquine’s formulation was stolen by the US and first used as a treatment in 1947. Resistance to Chloroquine was noted in the late 50s. It was endemic by the 1970s, probably partly because of an aggressive eradication campaign launched by the World Health in 1955. So, a mere 12 years of reliability. By contrast, the Chinese chemist Tu Youyou discovered Artemisinin in 1972, and no resistance was reported until 36 years later. Artemisinin remains the primary drug used to control malaria. Sherwood’s subjective anti-China rhetoric confounds her crusade to root out inauthenticity.
For Sherwood, this crusade is a two-pronged attack. She differentiates between authentic verisimilitude and personal authenticity, being true to oneself. Her subtitle, Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture, implies that hers is a fightback against current conditions. For all her brio, insight, and powers of persuasion, Sherwood overlooks the most important thing, that, at any time, authentic truth belongs to the dominant power. Authenticity is the best-promoted version of reality. The counterfeit picture of the world is the one you are reading that suppresses a different perspective. The problem of contemporary authenticity is that it is part of a “torrent of mis- and disinformation.”
It’s not easy to pigeonhole Alice Sherwood’s Authenticity. Through this sequence of opinion pieces runs Sherwood’s essayist’s gab. There is no denying it. Her prose sparkles with precision language—argot, fedora, mea culpas, and noisome. She floats on a higher plane, projecting a god-like grasp of all things, one-moment economicsy and evolutionary, arty the next. However, the book is not quite the philosophy and sociology it pretends to be. It is more like a quiz. The answers seem straightforward, then, gotcha!, they trip you up.
Erudition typically casts shadows where personal views can lurk unobtrusively. Unlike a deity, but like a minister of religious doctrine, Sherwood doesn’t question the authenticity of her opinions, and, finally, they come to light as expressions of empire and prejudice. Typically, into a flavoursome soup of celebrity, Sherwood tosses more serious seasoning. With Andy Warhol, a little quotation from Tim Wu. But it’s not straightforward. Wu quotes William James, who reflects that our lives, and so, our ideas, are less our own than we imagine. Sherwood marshals this circuit of quotation and fiction, anecdote and facts—readers would not catch them if left to their own devices. Sherwood’s examples are eclectic. However, their choice is insidious, flattering the luxury of insight, opportunity, and investment, a rules-based order. She slams down, but never hard, on opportunists seeking to flout trademark and Copywrite. She champions the democracy that promises equality, ignoring that such a social order privileges the elites who can afford health, soundly stitched clothing and accessories, and expensive art.
As the book progresses, Sherwood becomes more vitriolic. She goes from funny tales to a personal story, where, affectingly, she reveals vulnerability. It’s all warm and funny, with a soft spot for the odd deceptive psychopath. But then there is Shnapple, and Sherwood gets into an invective stride against subterfuge in the everyday. She is affronted that the drink won’t disclose the source of its natural flavour. Previously, with more esoteric curiosities, the undisclosed touch of an artist’s assistant, or a fake blood test, the stories were examples of the inauthentic, but now it seems she cares about authenticity. Where the distresses brought by a con artist, a maternal surrogate, or a high-value forgery are bumps in the road, the missing apple in the apple fizz is another register of despicableness. Strangely, her meticulous research, bristling with footnotes, evaporates in the brief chapter about the fight against malaria. The section feels like publicity sponsored by big pharma. I was curious to know the source of the assession that “The majority of the world’s ’ Bad Phama’ comes from China.” But its footnote leads to the line, “Although India is a major player too.” It gives the impression that the chapter is a racist tirade, inauthentic rubbish. Sherwood discredits Mao’s drive for the unification of medication, the best of both worlds, Western and vernacular while espousing its efficacy in finding a cure for malaria. Previously Sherwood wrote of patents and copywrites, but the cure for malaria doesn’t fit with a litigious mindset, guarantees of ownership, and the protection of future profits. The malarial drug is gifted to the world. This disregard for holding on to property is, for Sherwood, an anomaly. What captures her imagination is profiteering, trade secrets, hoarding medical discoveries, caring for power elites. Her vague critique stabs at the Chinese as ‘morally culpable’ because they allow their discovery to be free. In Sherwood’s narrative, the democratisation of discovery and altruism shorten the effective life of the drug. With even cursory scrutiny, her story is spurious.
Previously, Chloroquine was the substance used to control malaria. It was first synthesised by the Bayer laboratories in Germany in 1934 but wasn’t deployed as a malarial medication until ten years later. Chloroquine’s formulation was stolen by the US and first used as a treatment in 1947. Resistance to Chloroquine was noted in the late 50s. It was endemic by the 1970s, probably partly because of an aggressive eradication campaign launched by the World Health in 1955. So, a mere 12 years of reliability. By contrast, the Chinese chemist Tu Youyou discovered Artemisinin in 1972, and no resistance was reported until 36 years later. Artemisinin remains the primary drug used to control malaria. Sherwood’s subjective anti-China rhetoric confounds her crusade to root out inauthenticity.
For Sherwood, this crusade is a two-pronged attack. She differentiates between authentic verisimilitude and personal authenticity, being true to oneself. Her subtitle, Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture, implies that hers is a fightback against current conditions. For all her brio, insight, and powers of persuasion, Sherwood overlooks the most important thing, that, at any time, authentic truth belongs to the dominant power. Authenticity is the best-promoted version of reality. The counterfeit picture of the world is the one you are reading that suppresses a different perspective. The problem of contemporary authenticity is that it is part of a “torrent of mis- and disinformation.”
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