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https://theconversation.com/ever-feel-like-your-life-is-a-performance-everyone-does-and-this-1959-book-explains-roles-scripts-and-hiding-backstage-195939>
"Shakespeare’s adage — “All the world’s a stage” — suggests human beings are
conditioned to perform, and to possess an acute social awareness of how they
appear in front of others.
It resonates in the age of social media, where we’re all performing ourselves
on our screens and watching each other’s performances play out. Increasingly,
those screen performances are how we meet people, and how we form
relationships: from online dating, to remote work, to staying in touch with
family.
While the idea of performance as central to social life has been around for
centuries, Erving Goffman was the first to attempt a comprehensive account of
society and everyday life using theatre as an analogy.
His influential 1959 book
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is
something of a “bible” for scholars interested in questions of how we operate
in everyday life. It became a surprise US bestseller on publication, crossing
over to a general readership.
Goffman wrote about how we perform different versions of ourselves in different
social environments, while keeping our “backstage” essential selves private. He
called his idea dramaturgy.
Playwright Alan Bennett wrote admiringly of him, “Individuals knew they behaved
in this way, but Goffman knew
everybody behaved like this and so did I.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
