The Rhetoric of Sincerity

In times of intercultural tensions and conflicts, sincerity matters. Traditionally, sincerity concerns a performance of authenticity and truth, a performance that in intercultural situations is easily misunderstood. Sincerity plays a major role in law, in the arts (in literature, but especially in the visual and performing arts), and in religion. This is not surprising if we consider the historical background of the concept. Sincerity enters the English language in the sixteenth century, a period of major religious changes that also saw the emergence of the theater as the dominant idiom of secular representation. The present historical moment has much in common with that one: religious and cultural conflicts take place even as major transformations occur in representational idioms and media. The Rhetoric of Sincerity focuses mainly on the present, although the origin of the term "sincerity' is also discussed in order to better understand its current manifestations and ramifications. The book is concerned with the ways in which the performance of sincerity is culturally specific and is enacted in different media and disciplines. Its assumption, that sincerity consists of a performance, implies a special focus on the theatricality of sincerity, its bodily, linguistic, and social performances, and the success of such performances. Central to the discussion is the notion of "acts of sincerity" and what such acts do and produce or fail to do or produce.