Miti, interpretazioni e fraintendimenti: l'"autenticità" nella Convenzione UNESCO del 2003 e nella normativa italiana

The article focuses on one of the most critical issues when it comes to cultural heritage, namely the authenticity of a specific cultural practice and its role in the definition of a community identity. A fundamental characteristic for many UNESCO programs, authenticity is formally excluded from the text of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage and from the Operational Directives; yet, in the application of these tools, it is one of the most problematic issues both for the communities of practitioners and for the bodies responsible for the protection of the registered elements, with clear implications of anthropological, political, and economic nature. The contribution reflects on the myth of authenticity and its declinations in terms of “ownership” and “exclusivity” of different cultural practices, approaching the analysis from a dual perspective: the regulatory developments at an international level and the most recent determinations of UNESCO are placed in dialogue with the legal and doctrinal interpretations in the Italian context, restoring the complexity of a subject in which demo-ethno-anthropological skills prove essential for the understanding of the law and its application to the concrete cases of human communities.