On Rereading The Presentation of Self: Some Reflections

Author(s): ANTHONY GIDDENS

Source: Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 72, No. 4 (December 2009), pp. 290-295
Published by: American Sociological Association
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Goffman
ssous
a^^SS
On
Rereading
The Presentation of Self: Some Reflections
ANTHONY GIDD6NS
London School
of
Economics
It is over
twenty years
since I
opened
The
Presentation
of Self
in
Everyday Life
(Goffman [1959] 1990). Indeed,
in
searching
through my books,
I found it had
disappeared
from the shelves at some
point
over that
peri
od. So I had to order a new one. It came
resplendent
in an edition
published by
Penguin
books, showing
that Goffman
reached audiences
stretching
well
beyond
those
tapped by
most academic authors.
I
got
a few
surprises looking
at the book
again
after all this time. I'd
forgotten
how
anthropological
the book is?the sort of man
from-Mars
style
that Goffman
deploys.
He
describes the work as "a sort of handbook"
and, alternatively,
as a
"report."
His own PhD
on the Shetland Islands is
quite frequently
referred to?a
study
that falls into the
catego
ry
of what he calls
"respectable researches,"
where
regularities
of behavior are
"reliably
recorded." In the
text,
these
examples
taken
from
empirical
field work
famously jostle
with
quotations
and observations from
literary
texts.
Goffman uses
anthropological method,
but he is not
really acting
as an
anthropolo
gist?the
book
presumes
and draws
upon
tacit
knowledge
in which the author and reader
have to collaborate. He
points up
the "alien"
nature of
everyday practices
when
they
are
looked at "from the
outside"; yet
in most cases
he is all too
plainly
an insider. He would have
to be
because, although
he writes in an anthro
pological
vein,
he is far more concerned with
the
everyday
and the mundane than the exotic.
Moreover,
Goffman is not
really
concerned,
as
most
anthropologists
are,
with
uncovering
cul
tural
divergence
or difference. His
territory
is
a universal
one,
since much of what he has to
say applies
to all cultures.
I
forgot
how little there is about
language
in the book. I used to teach about Goffman
and I
suppose
after a while his various books
tended to
merge seamlessly
in
my
mind. Even
more than Harold
Garfinkel,
Goffman uncov
ered and
displayed
to view the
contextuality
of
language?tracing
a route that
arrived,
in a
virtually independent
manner?at conclusions
that
Ludwig Wittgenstein
reached in a far
more
tortuous,
philosophical way. Language
is
not
just
a matter of
"difference,"
as the struc
turalists
argue?all language-use
is
heavily
and
irremediably context-saturated,
and based
on a
multiplicity
of forms of tacit
knowledge,
awareness of
context,
and
bodily gesture,
which couldn't themselves be
put
into words.
There is a
great
deal about communication in
Presentation
of Self?indeed
in a sense it is all
about communication?but Goffman hadn't
yet pursued
the
implications
he would later
draw.
(There
is
just
one
place
in the text where
all this is
previsaged.
It is where he discusses
the
expressions
'Good Lord!' and
'My
God!'
and how
they
are used to
display recognition
of
disjunctures
in
everyday performance.
A
person might say
'Good Lord!' if reminded of
an
appointment
he or she
forgot
about. The
expression,
with its
religious
overtone,
con
veys
to the listener that the individual
accepts
the
importance
of the
lapse
and the need to
repair it.)
I was struck
by
what a flat
style
Goffman
adopts.
He uses
many
colorful
quotations,
and
plainly
selected them with an
eye
to their
effect on the reader?their "sit
up
and take
notice"
quality.
One such anecdote is the
"novelistic
incident,"
an
early quote
from a
work
by
the novelist William Sansom. It con
cerns
Preedy,
a
"vacationing Englishman"
in
Spain,
and is used to
highlight
the distinction
he makes between
expressions
of
self-identity
"given" deliberately
to
others,
and those inad
vertently "given
off."
Preedy's
elaborate
per
sonal rituals on the beach and
getting
into the
sea?designed
to
impress
others with his
sophistication
and
sang-froid?are
described
by
the novelist with a
proper
sense of
irony
and are
designed
to amuse as well as instruct.
290
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ON R R RDING TH PR S NTf)TION Of S LF 291
Goffman sometimes allows himself little
digs
of his own when he describes the contrived
nature of some of our
attempts
to create a cer
tain
impression
of others.
Mostly,
however,
his
own
style
is
dry
as
dust,
as if to
say
that at
least he?Goffman?is
confining
his own
impression-management
to the business of
academic
analysis.
This can't be
wholly
true,
though,
since he
displayed
so much artfulness
in his selection of
quotation.
Goffman is careful to
qualify
the dra
maturgical metaphor.
No
aspect
of
Presentation
of Self'has
attracted more critical
attention than its use of what Goffman
describes as "the
projections
...
of the theatri
cal
performance."
Goffman makes it
clear,
however,
how aware he is of the limitations of
this
approach, speaking
of its "obvious short
comings"?even
if in the end he is less than
wholly
consistent in what he
says
about those
shortcomings.
The theatre is all about make
believe and is
meticulously prepared
before
hand. In
everyday
life
by
contrast,
"things
are
real" and
performances
"sometimes not well
rehearsed."
(Yet, interestingly,
Goffman
quali
fies the statement
'things
are real'
by putting
the word
'presumably'
before
it).
On
stage,
actors
present
themselves as characters inter
acting
with other
players.
However,
unlike in
"real life" there is a third
party present:
the
audience. In the conclusion to his
book,
Goffman
suggests
that the
dramaturgical
approach
is
merely
one
"perspective" among
several others. A
segment
of interaction
may
be viewed
"technically," "politically,"
"struc
turally,"
and
"culturally"
as well as in terms of
the
metaphor
of theatre. He then
qualifies
even further in his final two or three
para
graphs:
"And so here the
language
and mask
of the
stage
will be
dropped."
It
formed,
he
suggests, simply
a sort of scaffold?a
prepara
tory phrase
to a construction of a
building
as
such. But scaffolds are built
only
in order to be
later taken down?the substance of the build
ing
is
actually
"the structure of social encoun
ters."
Much
importance
is
given
to collaborative
settings,
as contrasted to the activities of the
single performer.
We are all actors as it
were,
but the
play's
the
thing.
The
preening
of
Preedy
is
actually
an unusual
vignette
in the
context of the book. Most of it is concerned
with
mutually organized settings
in which
groups
of actors are involved. Actors normal
ly
function as
"teams,"
in
settings
in which the
main
point
of the
performance
is to
express
and
regulate
a series of tasks-in-hand rather
than
display
the
personal qualities
of the actor.
The
study
of trust in
differing
areas of the
social sciences has become a
major preoccu
pation
since Goffman wrote Presentation
of
Self?he
had a lot to
say
of relevance to it.
Achieving
the trust of others in social situa
tions is
partly accomplished by sustaining
a
collective
impression
of
competence- "pro
fessionalism" on the
part
of the
disparate
groups
of
waiters,
airline
personnel,
and med
ical staff that crowd Goffman's
pages
is
partly
a matter of
personal compatibility,
but is also
very
much also a matter of collective
impres
sion
management.
There is collusion involved
and sometimes
outright deception
or
sleight
of
hand.
Mostly, however,
he
says,
"team-work"
depends upon
an intrinsic
authenticity
which
cannot be reduced to mere ritual. Not all
restaurant
staff,
air
transportation workers,
doctors,
or nurses "know what
they
are
doing,"
but the vast
majority
have
to,
or the whole
enterprise
would soon
collapse.
Rereading
Presentation
of Self
after so
much time
away
is to
reexperience
its com
pelling power.
Goffman
may
have drawn
upon
Simmel, Cooley, Durkheim,
and Radcliffe
Brown,
but in
large part
he
mapped
out new
territory by looking
for the unfamiliar in the
familiar?and vice versa. He is the theorist of
copresence;
much more than
that,
he
explored
the
massively complex
nature of what
copres
ence
actually
is.
Copresence?the
behavior of
subjects
who are confined
together
for some
while?has distinctive features that more
impersonal
connections
necessarily
lack. Yet it
is Goffman's achievement to have shown that
the
grand
institutions of
society
both
operate
through, presume, yet
at the same time struc
ture,
the rituals that
people
follow when
they
are
together
in
public places.
Durkheim
argued
with
great
force and
conviction that
society
is far more than
just
the
sum of its individual
actors,
and he was entire
ly right
to do so. Yet he was never able to relate
that fundamental
insight
to an account of
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292 SOCIAL PSVCHOLOGV QUART6RLY
agency;
as a
consequence,
in his
writings
we
all tend to
appear
as the
playthings
of social
forces much more
powerful
than ourselves.
Goffman showed the
way
out of this
impasse.
"Society"
is
always
and
everywhere
the cre
ation of
highly
skilled and
knowledgeable
agents.
Yet the
continuous, minute,
and
amazingly complicated way
in which we
"bring
off" social life with others at the same
time
depends fundamentally upon
shared
forms of tacit
knowledge
that can in no sense
be reduced to the
specific
actions of individ
uals.
Presentation
of Self
retains an
enduring
importance
too because of the
weight
it
gives
to the
emotions,
a
major aspect
of Goffman's
originality. "Impression management"
at first
blush
appears
as
something cognitive
and in
some
part
of course it is. Yet as
organized
in
the context of
everyday rituals,
and done in a
collaborative
way,
it is the
key
to the conti
nuity
of self and the containment or
regula
tion of emotion.
Freud
regarded repression
as internal to
the
personality,
and constructed an elaborate
theory
of neurosis and
psychosis
around it. In
Presentation
of Self
Goffman shows that a
great
deal of emotional
management pro
ceeds
socially.
In "back
regions"?such
as
the kitchen in a
restaurant,
hidden from the
view of the
customers?people
are able to
express feelings
of frustration or
rage
that
they
must
carefully
conceal in their front
region performances. They might
make fun
of their
patrons
too. Back
regions
hence form
a
safety
valve for emotions that
might
other
wise "flood out" and
seriously compromise
the
competence
which the
performers
want to
put
on
display.
Goffman doesn't write much about mad
ness in Presentation
of Self
but all the ele
ments of his later ruminations about it are
there in the book. Mental
illness,
or at least
certain forms of
it,
he
implies,
resides more
in the minutiae of
everyday
life than in
grand
delusions. Those who we label as
"mad,"
both in a "serious" and in a more trivial
day
to-day
sense,
either cannot or will not
deploy.
the cues that "normal"
people routinely
make
use of to show to others that
they
are
compe
tent
agents.
The
mentally
disturbed sit or
stand too close to
others,
and either stare at
or refuse the
gaze
of the other
altogether;
they
don't "listen"
(i.e.,
demonstrate atten
tiveness)
to what others are
saying,
or inter
rupt
them
aggressively. They may
sit with
their limbs
slack,
unable or
unwilling
to
deploy
the continuous
monitoring
of
bodily
appearance
and demeanor that is taken for
granted
in the diverse contexts of social life.
The
protective practices
that
prevent
social
activity
from
being swamped by
anxi
eties or hatreds are
marvellously analyzed by
Goffman in Presentation
of Self.
Discretion
and tact
play
a fundamental role here.
They
may
seem like
quite
trivial
aspects
of
perfor
mances,
but
they
are
deeply
influential. Tact
and
circumspection,
Goffman
shows,
are
demanded not
only
of
"performers"
but of
"audiences" too. For
instance, people
rou
tinely stay away
from areas in
restaurants,
homes,
or
workplaces
to which
they
have not
been
invited,
actively helping
sustain the
"show" that is
being put
on. If an outsider for
some reason enters a back
region,
he or she
will
typically give
those in it a chance to
reassemble their
public selves,
even if
only
by
a discrete knock on the door. When in the
back
region,
the "intruder"
normally
observes due discretion
by
not
glancing
around too
openly
at what is in the
room,
in
case it could
compromise
the
identity
the
occupier
is
offering.
"Intimates"?those who
know the
performer well?may
be free to
flout some of these
restrictions,
since
they
are
already privy
to at least some of the
per
former's secrets.
Presentation
of Self
has been influential
in almost
every
social science
discipline,
especially sociology,
social
psychology,
anthropology,
and
linguistics.
Its
impact
has
extended
through
to theatre studies
(natural
ly),
media and cultural studies?and to the
theatre itself. We know that
playwrights
Tom
Stoppard
and Michael
Frayn
have read
Goffman. I'm not sure that Harold Pinter
ever
did,
but his
writing ranges
over much of
the same
territory, although
Goffman's
pic
ture of
everyday
life on the face of
things
is
far more
benign
than that of Pinter.
For all of its fine
qualities,
and its
staying
power,
from its first
publication
Presentation
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ON R R RDING TH PR S NTRTION Of S lf 293
of Self
met with a
barrage
of criticism from
other social scientists.1 One could summarize
these as worries about:
(1)
the status of the
dramaturgical metaphor; (2)
the absence of a
discussion of
power; (3)
the lack of a sense of
history
or institutional
change
in Goffinan's
work;
and
(4)
the
ambiguous
role of "reflexiv
ity,"
a term Goffman doesn't make
any play
with,
but
arguably
is intrinsic to his
writings.
The first of these sets of
objections
has
probably
been most commented
on,
but seems
to me the least
interesting.
I see no
particular
difficulty
in
comparing aspects
of social life
to the
theatre,
and it is an idea that
goes
back
centuries. Nor is there
any problem
in
taking
over
concepts coming
from the theatre into the
social
sciences,
as
long
as
they
are
carefully
defined and used. The notion of "role" is
per
haps
the most
prominent example.
As men
tioned,
Goffman surrounds the theatrical
analogies
he uses with a host of
qualifications
about their
application
to the wider social
world. Even if Goffman did not
especially per
sist with it
afterwards,
as a heuristic device the
language
of
"actors,"
"performances,"
"audi
ences" and so forth
proved highly
valuable in
stimulating
the novel ideas that he elaborated.
Power is a different
story.
One couldn't
say
that
power
and domination are
altogether
absent from Presentation
of Self.
Certain
pas
sages
and sections of the book are about how
we "do"
power.
For instance Goffman offers a
discussion of how filial deference?and there
fore differential
power
between the
genera
tions?was
organized
in traditional
China,
based
upon
the work La Civilisation
Chinoise,
written
by
Marcel Granet
(1929).
Elaborate
ritual and careful
bodily
demeanor ensure that
the son treats his father as "a chief"
...
"One
comes
night
and
morning
to
pay homage.
After
which,
one waits for orders."
Yet there is no
systematic
discussion of
power
in Presentation
of Self
nor as far as I
know in
any
other of Goffman's
major
works.
He has a
possible
defense: he is concerned
with
interpersonal
interaction between indi
viduals in situations of
copresence. Any
influ
1
See the
diversity
of critical
appraisals
offered in
Fine,
Manning,
and Smith 2000.
ences that
go beyond
such situations he
simply
defines as not his area of concern?let
others,
using
different
perspectives, explore
them. A
moment's
reflection, however,
will show that
such a defence is
inadequate. Copresence
could never be defined as
simply studying
vis
ible circumstances in which individuals inter
act with one another. The vast bulk of what
frames situations of
copresence
is invisible?
it consists of
institutions,
both taken for
grant
ed,
but also drawn
upon, by
the
parties
to the
interaction. This is most obvious in the case of
language
and
communication,
which
pre
sumes a vast
apparatus
of rules and
signals
deployed by
a
linguistic community.
Yet it is
also true of
systems
of
power,
which both
structure, yet
are
reproduced by, everyday
rit
uals of different sorts.
Presentation
of Self
would have been an
even more
impressive study
if it had contained
a more
systematic analysis
of this issue.
Consider the
example
of
professions,
which in
one
guise
or another
crop up
often in the book.
How doctors talk to
patients,
and how the con
text of interaction is
structured, expresses
much
larger aspects
of medical
institutions,
including major
differentials of
power.
It
would be
impossible
to understand
fully why
the interaction takes the form it does without
grasping
these.
They
are not
just
a "back
drop": they help constitute,
as well as
being
constituted
by,
the interaction.
Goffman discusses
"pieces"
of interaction
mostly
as
separate segments?observations
of
behavior in a
diversity
of times and
places.
Wilfully,
or
perhaps
as a
by-product
of his
fondness for
describing
short
episodes
of
behavior,
the
pieces
are never
put together.
At
one
point
in Presentation
of Self
for
example,
he has some four or five
paragraphs
on situa
tions in which individuals are treated as "non
persons,"
an obvious manifestation of
power.
For
instance,
in the
Deep South,
whites would
discuss their slaves in their
presence
as
though
they
were not there.
Slaves,
like servants in
medieval
courtly society,
were
expected
to
enter
freely
into back
regions,
the basis that no
management
of
impression
was needed for
them. The
observation,
while
interesting,
is
not followed
through
or its wider
implications
teased out.
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294 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY QUflRT RLY
What
applies
to
power applies
also to his
tory. Anthropologists
who
study
small oral
cultures
may
know little of their
history
and
are therefore
perhaps justified
in
acting
as if it
can be
ignored.
The same is not true of con
temporary
societies
however,
from which the
vast
majority
of Goffman's
examples
come.
Of
course,
one can
put
Presentation
of Self
alongside
other
texts,
and in this
way attempt
to add an historical dimension to some of the
examples
Goffman discusses. In his celebrat
ed book The
Civilizing
Process
(1969),
for
example,
Norbert Elias
analyses
the historical
origins
of
civility
in what Goffman would call
front-region
behavior and the social
organiza
tion of
privacy.2
Elias was far more influenced
by
Freud than Goffman
was,
but
plainly
the
interactions Goffman discussed in
everyday
life do have an evolution that is
absolutely
intrinsic to their character. The social
psychol
ogist
Thomas Scheff is one
among
several
prominent
authors who have
developed
these
connections in an
interesting
and
potentially
highly
fruitful
way?he
relates them to
episodes
of
deadly
violence as in war
(Scheff
1999).
Lack of attention to
reflexivity
in
Presentation
of Self?and
in Goffman's subse
quent
works?is
puzzling. Reflexivity
can be
interpreted
on two levels: in relation to the
author and in relation to the contexts of social
life with which he is concerned. Goffman
rarely
seems
"present"
in his
books, any
more
than Durkheim or Radcliffe-Brown did. Yet
there are
plenty
of
questions
to be asked. What
impression
did Goffman want Presentation
of
Self
to make on the reader?
Every
book is
about
impression management,
since books
are
designed
to
convey
certain
messages,
not
only
about what the text
"says"
but about the
impressions
it also
"gives."
In
using
so
many
fictional
examples, yet introducing
them in a
casual and off-hand
way,
Presentation
of Self
gives
an
impression
of
lightly
worn erudition
and also a certain cool. It is
clearly designed
to
draw readers in and cause them to reflect
upon
their own lives?"now that Goffman has
pointed
it
out,
I
recognize that, yes,
this is
2
For a relevant
discussion,
see Kasson 1990.
what I
do,
how others react to me and how I
react to them." The author
appeals
to the same
body
of tacit
knowledge
in
persuading
the
reader of his
argument
as the characters that
appear
in the text.
What does Goffman
actually
mean when
he
compares
his use of "the
language
and
mask of the
stage"
to
scaffolding
that can be
dismantled once the
job
is done? He could
mean
something
banal?that the
metaphor
of
the theatre directed his attention both to a
"subject-matter" (copresence)
and a
way
of
analyzing it,
which when
uncovered,
could
better be discussed without the framework that
originally inspired
it. Yet Goffman's comments
raise the
problematic?and,
one would have
thought, inescapable?issue
that
reflexivity
presumes
in relation to itself. The student of
reflexivity
is also a reflexive actor?the sense
in which Goffman's observations are
"objec
tive" then becomes harder to tease out.
Reflexivity
also
directly impacts
the
episodes
and
happenings
that are the stuff of
Goffman's work. In one
sense,
he is the
sophisticated analyst
of the
phenomenon.
He
shows that the reflexive
monitoring
of the
body,
the
gaze,
and of cues
routinely given
and
given
off
by
others is both
amazingly complex
and intrinsic to social life. Yet
reflexivity
is
also a
learning process,
and this
thought
leads
us back to
history.
All social actors are
capa
ble of
reflecting
the conditions of their
action,
and of
altering
them. Not
only
are
they capa
ble of
it,
they
do it all the
time,
both
setting
into motion and
being
influenced
by
wider
problems
of
change
which are
thereby brought
about. I find Goffman's disinclination to wres
tle with such
problems frustrating.
The Presentation
of Self
first
published
in
1959,
was Goffman's first book. It was suc
ceeded
by
a
dazzling variety
of
others,
each
and
every
one of them a
major
achievement. I
don't think he
coped fully
with the
range
of
problems
I have noted
above,
but he elaborat
ed
brilliantly
on
many
of the observations and
insights
introduced in Presentation
of Self.
His
most
directly
"structural" work was his
study
of "total
institutions"?organizations
such as
asylums
or
prisons
in which individuals are
kept
confined from the
larger
social world
(Goffman 1961).
Goffman's
originality
is in
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ON R R RDING TH Pfl S NTflTION Of S Lf 295
full
display
in his
analysis,
but he left it to oth
ers to
supply
the wider
developmental
context
in which such institutions came into
being
and
evolved. It was Michel Foucault
(1975)
who
most
persuasively
showed how total
organiza
tions connect to wider
processes
of modern
ization and to
power.
In one of
my essays (Giddens 1988)
I note
that,
just
like
Durkheim,
Foucault seemed to
deny
to individuals those
very qualities
as
agents
which Goffman focused
upon
so
per
suasively.
The
mystery
of the social world is
how it can be the case that all
('competent')
human actors are
highly
skilled and knowl
edgeable
about what
they
do and
why,
but are
at the same time driven
by
social forces far
larger
than themselves. Goffman
was com
pletely
correct how
extraordinarily complex
human action and interaction
are,
and that
they
have to be
actively
and
continuously
monitored
by
those who
produce
them.
Yet,
in
an era of
globalization,
Durkheim's stress that
society
is far
greater
than the sum of the indi
viduals who
compose
it seems to me more
acute than ever. No individual
possesses
more
than a miniscule fraction of the
knowledge
upon
which social
continuity
and order
depend; yet
somehow it all more or less holds
together,
even now that our
interdependence
with others is in
many ways
worldwide.
R F R NC S
Elias,
Norbert. 1969. The
Civilizing
Process. 2 vol
umes.
Oxford,
UK: Blackwell.
Fine, Gary Alan, Philip Manning,
and
Gregory
W. H.
Smith,
eds. 2000.
Erving Goffman.
4 volumes.
London,
UK:
Sage.
Foucault,
Michel. 1975.
Discipline
and Punish: The
Birth
of
the Prison. New York: Random House.
Giddens, Anthony.
1988. "Goffman as a
Systematic
Social Theorist."
Pp.
250-79 in
Erving
Goffman: Exploring
the Interaction
Order,
edit
ed
by
Paul Drew and
Anthony
Wootton.
Cambridge,
UK:
Polity.
Goffman, Erving. [1959]
1990. The Presentation
of
Self
in
Everyday Life.
New York:
Penguin.
-.
1961.
Asylums.
New York:
Doubleday.
Granet,
Marcel. 1929. La civilisation chinoise.
Paris,
France: Editions Albin Michel.
Kasson,
John F. 1990. Rudeness and
Civility:
Manners
in
Nineteenth-Century
Urban America. New
York: Hill and
Wang.
Scheff,
Thomas J. 1999.
Being Mentally
III: A
Sociological Theory.
New York: Aldine de
Gruyter.
Anthony
Giddens is a member
of
the House
of
Lords,
a Fellow
of King's College, Cambridge,
and
Emeritus
Professor
at the London School
of
Economics. He was Director
of
the LSE
from
1997 to
2003,
and was made a
peer
in 2004. He has
honorary degrees
or
comparable
awards
from
21 uni
versities. He is an
honorary fellow of
the American
Academy of
Arts and
Sciences,
the Russian
Academy of
Science,
and the Chinese
Academy of
Social Sciences. He was the BBC Reith Lecturer in
1999.
According
to
Google
Scholar,
he is the most
widely
cited
sociologist
in the world. His
many
books include The Constitution of
Society (1984), Beyond
Left and
Right (1994),
The Third
Way
(1998),
and
Europe
in the Global
Age (2006).
His most recent
major
work is The Politics of Climate
Change (2009).
His books have been translated into more than
forty languages.
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