the dramaturgy of the self

[aamcnamara]

The reading for my sociology class today was a guy named Goffman, who has this theory about how the "self" is performative. That is, everyone is performing some "front" for some audience all the time, and we use settings and props and mannerisms in our performances to make them more convincing.

And according to him, life is performance. If you stop performing one role, you're just performing a different one. If you strip away all the performance, there quite literally is nothing left.

Which just strikes me as an ultimately sort of sad way to look at life. Maybe it's me being naive or not cynical enough, but--if we can never stop performing? If we always are faking it, on some level? That's sort of depressing.

I feel like there's a true me. Sometimes it's hidden, maybe most of the time some part of it is hidden in one way or the other, but with friends that I really connect to, I feel like I can be every bit of me. I can express every bit of the reactions that pop up in my brain without censoring myself--"she won't appreciate that joke", "they wouldn't think that was interesting", "he'd just look at me like, 'what?'".

At one point or another when I was auditioning for play after play in high school and not getting into any of them, I came up with the theory that maybe the reason no one cast me in shows was that I'm not very good at not being me. I've spent so much time becoming as much me as I can that when I'm acting I can never really forget that me. Being cast in this play in college means that that probably isn't in fact the case (at least, I hope against hope that I wasn't typecast in this part), but the ideas slot into one another.

Maybe I'm deluding myself, that my self exists. Maybe "my really me" is just a different performance I put on. But I don't think so. Sociology is all about distrusting things--distrusting thoughts, distrusting impulses and initial reactions--but if I can't trust me, trust my self, then when I'm thinking about sociology, what am I standing on?

Comments

[notadoor.livejournal.com]

Well, I think that one can be performing, and also be entirely true. To me, displaying certain aspects of oneself more prominently in certain situations isn't lying any more than wearing a shirt that's flattering. Your body is the same beneath the shirt, it's just making a choice about how & what you're displaying in that situation.

Sure, sometimes people do things or act in ways they're not really ok with, or they don't really feel. But being selectively yourself is still being yourself.

[timwb.livejournal.com]

Not only that, we're constantly rewriting our backstory and memories to suit the present role we play.

[araken.livejournal.com]

I prefer Walt Whitman -- "I am vast--I contain multitudes"

Different people bring out different sides of me, but it's all me. The me at work might be subtly, or even blatantly different from the me with an old friend, or me online, but they're each equally genuine.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I suspect that there are people who have a more difficult time being someone else when it's someone closer to themselves than when it's someone who is very, very not like themselves, but I don't know if that applies here.

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

"I came up with the theory that maybe the reason no one cast me in shows was that I'm not very good at not being me."

ha!

that was pretty much the same conclusion I came to earlier this year when I was wondering why I can never manage to actually write anything worth reading.

"Being cast in this play in college means that that probably isn't in fact the case (at least, I hope against hope that I wasn't typecast in this part)..."

Or...people see you differently at college than they did at high school.

Also, regarding your readings, I think that there is a difference between questioning things - even to the point of not completely trusting what makes you you - and viewing everything you do as performative. The latter indicates intent to me, and that goes completely against all the reasons I've found that it makes sense to question how much of you is you and how much of you is society. It always seemed to me that the whole point of cultural critique is that social norms become so normalized that they become instintive. I don't see how that meshes with the idea that everything we think and do is performative.

[klingonguy.livejournal.com]

Bah, this is a solipsistic theory. If you disagree and point to your core self, you'll just be told that it's only another role, one that pretends/insists it's not a role. Bah.

None of this is all that different from the old cogito ergo sum. Yes, the information from your senses is suspect. And yes, your own cognitions are likewise suspect (though for different reasons). But at the end of the day, you still have to pick a place to stand, or it's all just academic masturbation.

Go, you!

[elenuial.livejournal.com]

Empiricism is all about trusting a sort of sensory regression to the mean.

Or: I once read an essay about how poorly-taught postmodernism was destructive to your rational capabilities, and now I can talk to college freshmen without feeling inarticulate and wanting to kill them.

However, certain branches of postmodernism well-understood can provide good insight into the world of contemporary first-world culture--especially pop culture. Academic masturbation it may be, but only that? Hardly.

[fishy-pooser.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm in a Sociology class too! Which one are you in?

I didn't find Goffman especially depressing. My professor said that his argument wasn't that we're all giant fakes, but more that we have to be different things to different people - that it's impossible to always be the truest version of yourself to everyone. And even those that seem like they're completely comfortable in their own skin and so self-assured are really just the best performers & can adapt themselves to most situations. I actually found it comforting because it means everyone really doesn't know who they are either, even if it looks like they do.

[vcmw]

If you turn it inside out, it can be considered an answer to a certain kind of depression. So many people reach certain points in their life where they begin to feel kinda disassociated and detached. At that point they look at all of these things they are doing and go "these are performances, these are roles, this is NOT me!" (as best exemplified in that song that goes "this is not my beautiful house"). And having this feeling of being surrounded by a performance that is not-you can make you feel trapped or caged by an external force. Someone in that position may no longer be sure that they have a real self, or not know how to value the different parts of themselves. So that person would still be panicked if they were told "these performances are just part of you, there is a real self"... on the other hand, tell someone in that panicked state that we ARE the performances, and maybe you open them up to an idea of agency - the idea that they own the performance and can redraft it - that if they are performing a role the role is within their own ownership, doesn't have to be dictated by society, can be rewritten, etc.

Also, sometimes it can be a helpful mindset to try on when trying to let go of negative behaviors. There is a thread in cultural discussion that suggests that whatever comes easiest to us, whatever we "do naturally," is our true self. But behaviors wear pathways in the brain that make them feel as if they "come naturally." So someone who is trying to rewrite those pathways and leave behind a well worn but negative behavior could welcome the idea that various behaviors are equally real/unreal, because that would justify letting go of the "natural" seeming negative behavior. Focus on a "true self" might have led that person to see their negative behavior as "true" and then have led them to an unhappy cognitive place that by seeking out a more positive behavior they were being "untrue."

Sorry for the proliferation of quote marks, I know they're a sign of lazy writing.

[elenuial.livejournal.com]

Theory of the performative self is like behavioral psychology: missing certain key features, but you'd be a fool to ignore it as the powerful tool it can be to understanding human behavior.

What makes the theory especially interesting to me is the idea that someone's conception of a "core self"--whether as subject or concept--is performative in and of itself.

Of course, that can be like calling water "wetness," and so you have my first point.

I think identity formation in itself is really interesting. Taken into the virtual realm, it becomes exponentially more interesting.

[aliseadae]

My thoughts are that I am always me. Sometimes I'm a more diluted version of myself - it depends on the situation. I am much less diluted with you or with BSFFAs than I am, say, in the grocery store. That is only one of the thoughts I have. I might have more if I re-read the post.