The Politics of Authenticity: Countercultures and Radical Movements Across the Iron Curtain, 1968-1989

Following the convulsions of 1968, one element uniting many of the disparate social movements that arose across Europe was the pursuit of an elusive ＂authenticity＂ that could help activists to understand fundamental truths about themselves-their feelings, aspirations, sexualities, and disappointments. This volume offers a fascinating exploration of the politics of authenticity as they manifested themselves among such groups as Italian leftists, East German lesbian activists, and punks on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Together they show not only how authenticity came to define varied social contexts, but also how it helped to usher in the neoliberalism of a subsequent era.

Kate Mahoney is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Modern British History at the University of Essex. She completed her doctoral thesis on feminist mental health activism in late twentieth-century Britian at the University of Warwick in 2018. She has contributed to collections on researchers’ emotions and the experiences of PhD students within the neoliberal academy.