Erving Goffman - The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
22.02.2024
This is another book of which I read a part for my sociology class, but the whole of which I now plan to read for my essay. Initially I will say that Goffman's theater metaphor in conjunction with my occupying myself with Artaud is really making me want to properly get into engaging in the theater.
The inevitability of stable physical traits being incorporated into the "personal front" of one's role inevitably must play a role in both the dissociation of Self from body and in the desire for undefinability.
If I am considering strength f personal identification with one's social roles (or "sincerity", in Goffman's phrasing), it seems to me that a protective factor would be consistency of front, particularly of personal front.
To give a radio talk that will sound genuinely informal, spontaneous, and relaxed, the speaker may have to design his script with painstaking care, testing one phrase after another, in order to follow the content, language, rhythm, and pace of everyday talk.
RIP Erving Goffman you would have loved podcasts.
Interesting to consider the extremely performative nature of aristocratic character with the idea of a broadly disciplined society—for now largely beyond my scope, unfortunately.
The typical one-dimensionality of the performed role and the interest of the performing in presenting it to the audience as their One role must undoubtedly contribute to the difficulty of the audience in connecting to the performer, who has become rather objectified.
In response to these communication contingencies, performers commonly attempt to exert a kind of synecdochic responsibility, making sure that a s many as possible of the minor events in the performance, however instrumentally inconsequential these events may be, will occur in such a way as to convey either no impression or an impression that is compatible and consistent with the overall definition of the situation that is being fostered.
Or: the default "self" is to be disciplined into suspension. All of this while the presentation itself must appear natural.
If it is a general characteristic of performances that activity oriented towards work-tasks tends to be converted into activity oriented towards communication
, then one understands that performance is characterized by the conversion of one's own action (and received reaction) as productive into reproductive reaction to the communicative symbolic network.
Distance as a sign of respect in some manner constitutes an awareness of the impersonality of a personal role.
Something something institutionalization, something something symbolic universe: Thus co-operation between two performers each of whom was ostensibly involved in presenting his own special performance could be analyzed as a type of collusion or 'understanding’ without altering the basic frame of reference.
23.02.2024
The symbolic universe constitutes a performance of a general social team in which all are simultaneously performer and audience send post.
Another area is suggested by the very widespread tendency in our society to give performers control over the place in which they attend to what are called biological needs. In our society, defecation involves an individual in activity which is defined as inconsistent with the cleanliness and purity standards expressed in many of our performances. Such activity also causes the individual to disarrange his clothing and to 'go out of play,' that is, to drop from his face the expressive mask that he employs in face-to-face interaction. At the same time it becomes difficult for him to reassemble his personal front should the need to enter into interaction suddenly occur. Perhaps that is a reason why toilet doors in our society have locks on them. When asleep in bed the individual is also immobilized, expressively speaking, and may not be able to bring himself into an appropriate position for interaction or bring a sociable expression to his face until some moments after being wakened, thus providing one explanation of the tendency to remove the bedroom from the active part of the house. The utility of such seclusion is reinforced by the fact that sexual activity is likely to occur in bedrooms, a form of interaction which also renders its performers incapable of immediately entering into an other interaction.
Sociological works have such a wonderful way of writing sometimes.
I think Goffman's concept of latent secrets may be quite useful to me in my essay, as I think the schizoid experience is particularly suited to making such secrets un-latent.
He frequently cites de Beauvoir: perhaps I shall have to read her sooner rather than later.
24.02.2024
Goffman writes: I have suggested two standard ways in which performers derogate their audiences—mock role-playing and uncomplimentary terms of reference.
It is easy enough to see the social "parody" described by Laing as such a mock role-playing which takes open places in the "front" of the performance.
Derisive collusion occurs most frequently, perhaps, between a performer and himself. School children provide examples of this when they cross their fingers while telling a lie or stick out their tongues when the teacher momentarily moves to a position where she cannot see the tribute. So, too, employees will often grimace at their boss, or gesticulate a silent curse, performing these acts of contempt or insubordination at an angle such that those to whom these acts are directed cannot see them. Perhaps the most timid form of this kind of collusion is found in the practice of 'doodling' or of ‘going away’ to imaginary pleasant places, while still maintaining some show of performing the part of listener.
From this point of view the "phantasy world" may be taken as a form of derisive collusion. Further cause to maintain that schizoidity is socially inseparable from mechanisms of discipline.
... the performance given by a team is not a spontaneous, immediate response to the situation, absorbing all of the team’s energies and constituting their sole social reality; the performance is something the team members can stand back from, back far enough to imagine or play out simultaneously other kinds of performances attesting to other realities. Whether th e performers feel their official offering is the ‘realist’ reality or not, they will give surreptitious expression to multiple versions of reality, each tending to be incompatible with the others.
This quote provides such a perfect point of synthesis for Berger and Luckmann's Social Construction of Reality.
When these flusterings or symptoms of embarrassment become perceived, the reality that is supported by the performance is likely to be further jeopardized and weakened, for these signs of nervousness in most cases are an aspect of the individual who presents a character and not an aspect of the character he projects, thus forcing upon the audience an image of the man behind the mask.
One may consider a performance so over-disciplined so that its flaw is rather opposite, too "man"less a performance, also shows that the mask is also a mask (one is reminded of Laing's "ghost of the weed garden" case).
Goffman describes how a performer must maintain a certain distance from their role in order to actually control the performance. It is worth considering if a disciplinary society, in which one's actions are heavily attended to by the apparatus-audience, causes only further feelings of contradiction with the role which is theoretically a natural identity.
Withdrawal as a form of discipline:It will be apparent that an automatic way of ensuring that no member of the team or no member of the audience acts improperly is to limit the size of both teams as much as possible. Other things being equal, the fewer the members, the less possibility of mistakes, ’difficulties,’ and treacheries.
25.02.2024
Finished this book last night, but was to tired to write anything down. Pretty good, I'm glad to see Goffman acknowledge is only one possible framework through which one can analyze social phenomena. Every Serious sociological book I read, with its particular clinical town towards human activity, makes me understand why Ballard wrote Like That.
The quote that When an event occurs which is expressively incompatible with this fostered impression, significant consequences are sim ultaneously felt in three levels of social reality, each of which involves a different point of reference and a different order of fact.
and the subsequent description thereof significantly remind me of Tetsuo. I need to keep this in mind for one of my artistic projects.
This book is more suitable to sythesis with Foucault than I had expected, and it was quite funny to see Goffman at the end mention how power's "means of action" are in fact frequently a means of communication (it was particularly amusing that this was mentioned on the topic of physical coercion).
The epigraph at the very beginning is a quote from George Santayana defending masks agains those who not be angry with them for not being faces. Of course there is a great deal of value in masks. But we perhaps pretend too easily that they are faces as we play on the social stage.