'Bit by Bit the City Bewilders' Authenticity on Authenticity Part 2 Dissertation 2006 Edwina Kinsella Oxford Brookes University Oxford | UK ‘Bit by bit the City bewilders’: On Authenticity – Inauthenticity, Self and Other is a work which balances theses and antitheses: Authenticity with Inauthenticity, Self – Other, subjectivity – objectivity, occupation of space and its negation. At the core of this discussion is the habitual flux between the state of authenticity and its dipole Inauthenticity. As espoused by Heidegger and Sartre - a being does not achieve the sought for state of authenticity but rather wavers precariously on the edge of inauthenticity, at times, in absorption, toppling over that edge into alienation and climbing out of it once more towards Authenticity. Within this box is a book of two sides, mirroring and inverting from one half to the other. The ego meets the alter ego, not just in the content of what is written but also as a work of typography and in the architecture of the book itself. In the polemic of an unachievable Authenticity: Bewilderment = Elucidation. At the centre of this book is the point of bewilderment and hence the metamorphous. The reader must physically engage with the journeys' turning point and is forced to turn the book around in order to progress to the alternative events.This work as text is constructed of interplaying layers. Additional to the occupational peregrination from private to the public sphere and the subsequent retreat from that realm of the city to the space of the imaginary is the journey of Self and without-Self. Consider each of the architectural elements that mark the arrival of new chapters, as rooms in a house, it is the individual that connects those units or alternatively, without connecting them keeps them separate. There is no last page in this book as there is no stationary point in the authentic-inauthentic journey. The reader joins the individual once again in the imagination and ventures across the cover as if starting the day anew, strives toward Authenticity. This dissertation was chosen due to its inter-disciplinary approach to twentieth-century literary spatial concepts. This work demonstrates a refreshing approach to the poetics of space, and challenges the reader on many levels – structure, methodology, subject matter and layout. Attempting to elucidate an understanding of the dual interpretations of the subconscious mind is to be commended The ambition and originality of this dissertation should be rewarded. Even if the approach and style is not to everyone’s liking. You will remember this work.