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 ofEconomics

It is over twenty years since I opened The

Presentation
of Self in Everyday Life
(Goffman [1959] 1990). Indeed, in searching
throughmy books, I found ithad disappeared
from the shelves at some point over thatperi
od. So I had to order a new one. It came
resplendent in an edition published by
showing that Goffman
Penguin books,
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 ofman

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 inmost cases
he is all too plainly an insider.He would have
to be because, although he writes in an anthro
pological vein, he is farmore concerned with

the everyday and themundane than the exotic.

Moreover, Goffman is not really concerned, as

most anthropologists are,with uncovering cul

tural divergence or difference. His territoryis
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 tomerge seamlessly inmy mind. Even

more thanHarold Garfinkel, Goffman uncov

ered and displayed to view the contextuality of
language?tracing a route that arrived, in a

virtually independentmanner?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 intowords.
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 textwhere
all this is previsaged. It iswhere 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.)
Iwas struck by what a flat styleGoffman
adopts. He uses many colorful quotations, and
plainly selected them with an eye to their
effect on the reader?their "sit up and take

quality. One such anecdote is the

"novelistic incident," an early quote from a
work by the novelistWilliam Sansom. It con
cerns Preedy, a "vacationing Englishman" in
notice"

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
to impress others with his
sea?designed

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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Of S LF 291
ON R R RDINGTH PR S NTf)TION
Goffman sometimes allows himself littledigs
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
No
of
aspect
maturgical
metaphor.
more critical
attracted
Presentation of Self'has
than its use of
as
describes
"the projections
cal performance." Goffman
however, how aware he is of
attention

what Goffman
... of the theatri
makes it clear,

the limitations of
this approach, speaking of its "obvious short
if in the end he is less than
comings"?even
wholly consistent inwhat he says about those
shortcomings. The theatre is all about make
believe and ismeticulously 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

In the conclusion to his book,

suggests that the dramaturgical
is
merely one "perspective" among
approach
several others. A segment of interactionmay
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

audience.
Goffman

of the stage will be dropped." It formed, he

suggests, simply a sort of scaffold?a prepara
toryphrase to a construction of a building as
such. But scaffolds are built only inorder to be
later taken down?the

substance of the build

structure
is
"the
of social encoun
ing actually

ters."

importance is given to collaborative

as
contrasted to the activities of the
settings,
single performer.We are all actors as itwere,
Much

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 inwhich the
main point of the performance is to express
and regulate a series of tasks-in-hand rather
thandisplay thepersonal qualities of the actor.
study of trust in differing areas of the
social sciences has become a major preoccu

The

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 ofwaiters, airline personnel, and med
ical staff that crowd Goffman's pages is partly
a matter of personal compatibility, but is also
verymuch also a matter of collective impres
sionmanagement. There is collusion involved
and sometimes outrightdeception or sleight of

hand.

Mostly,

however,

he

says,

"team-work"

depends upon an intrinsic authenticitywhich

cannot be reduced to mere ritual. Not all
restaurant staff, air transportation workers,
doctors, or nurses "know what theyare doing,"
but the vast majority have to, or the whole

enterprisewould 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
territoryby looking for the unfamiliar in the
familiar?and vice versa. He is the theoristof
copresence; much more than that,he explored
themassively complex nature ofwhat 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
isGoffman's achievement to have shown that
the grand institutions of society both operate
through,presume, yet at the same time struc

ture, the rituals thatpeople follow when they

are together in public places.
Durkheim argued with great force and
conviction that society is farmore 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 SOCIALPSVCHOLOGV
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 theway 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 lifewith 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 theweight itgives
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

as
ceeds socially. In "back regions"?such
the kitchen in a restaurant, hidden from the
are able to
view of the customers?people
or
of
frustration
express feelings
rage that
must
in
conceal
their
front
they
carefully

region performances. They might make fun

of theirpatrons too. Back regions hence form
a safety valve for emotions thatmight 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 theminutiae 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 routinelymake
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) towhat 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 towhich 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
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

will

the "intruder"
region,
normally
observes due discretion by not glancing
around too openly at what is in the room, in
case it could compromise the identity the

back

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,
social psychology,
especially
sociology,
and
anthropology,
linguistics. Its impact has

extended through to theatre studies (natural

to the
ly), media and cultural studies?and
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

farmore benign than that of Pinter.

For all of its fine qualities, and its staying

power, from its first publication Presentation

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Of S lf 293
ON R R RDINGTH PR S NTRTION
of Self met with a barrage of criticism from
other social scientists.1One 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 termGoffman 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
tome 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 themost 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 ifGoffman did not especially per

sistwith itafterwards, as a heuristic device the
language

of

"actors,"

"performances,"

"audi

ences" and so forthproved highly valuable in

stimulating the novel ideas thathe 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 thework La Civilisation Chinoise,

written by Marcel Granet (1929). Elaborate

ritual and careful bodily demeanor ensure that
the son treatshis 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 inPresentation 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
Manning, and Smith 2000.

offered in Fine,

ences thatgo beyond such situations he simply

defines as not his area of concern?let others,
using differentperspectives, 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 inwhich individuals inter
act with one another. The vast bulk of what
frames situations of copresence is invisible?
itconsists of institutions,both taken for grant
ed, but also drawn upon, by the parties to the
interaction.This ismost 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

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
evenmore impressive study if ithad contained
also

a more systematic analysis of this issue.

Consider the example of professions, which in
one guise or another crop up often in thebook.
How doctors talk to patients, and how the con

text of interaction is structured, expresses

larger aspects of medical institutions,
including major differentials of power. It

much

would be impossible to understand fullywhy

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 inPresentation of Self for example,
he has some four or five paragraphs on situa
tions inwhich individuals are treated as "non

persons," an obvious manifestation of power.

For instance, in theDeep South, whites would
discuss their slaves in theirpresence as though
theywere not there. Slaves, like servants in
medieval courtly society, were expected to
enter freely intoback regions, thebasis thatno

management of impression was needed for

them. The observation, while interesting, is
not followed throughor itswider implications
teased

out.

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294 SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY
QUflRTRLY
What applies to power applies also to his
tory.Anthropologists who study small oral
cultures may know little of their history and
are thereforeperhaps justified in acting as if it

what I do, how others react tome 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

Of course, one can put Presentation of Self

alongside other texts, and in thisway attempt
to add an historical dimension to some of the

mask of the stage" to scaffolding that can be

dismantled once the job is done? He could
mean something banal?that themetaphor of

can be ignored. The same is not true of con

temporary societies however, from which the
vast majority of Goffman's examples come.

examples Goffman discusses. In his celebrat

ed book The Civilizing Process (1969), for
example, Norbert Elias analyses the historical

origins of civility inwhat Goffman would call

front-region behavior and the social organiza
tion of privacy.2 Elias was farmore 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
relates them to
highly fruitful way?he
as inwar (Scheff
of
violence
deadly
episodes
1999).
Lack

of attention to reflexivity in
Presentation of Self?and inGoffman's subse
quent works?is
puzzling. Reflexivity can be
on
two
levels: in relation to the
interpreted
author and in relation to the contexts of social
life with which he is concerned. Goffman
rarely seems "present" inhis books, anymore
than Durkheim or Radcliffe-Brown did. Yet
thereare 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 certainmessages, 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-handway, Presentation of Self

gives an impression of lightlyworn erudition
and also a certain cool. It is clearly designed to
draw readers in and cause them to reflectupon

their own lives?"now

that Goffman has
it
I
out,
pointed
recognize that, yes, this is
2

For a relevant discussion,

see Kasson

1990.

appear in the text.

What does Goffman actually mean when
he compares his use of "the language and

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
one would have
raise the problematic?and,

that reflexivity
thought, inescapable?issue
to
in
relation
itself.
The student of
presumes
a
sense
also
is
reflexive
actor?the
reflexivity
inwhich Goffman's observations are "objec
tive" thenbecomes harder to tease out.

Reflexivity also directly impacts the

episodes and happenings that are the stuffof
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 offby 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 therebybrought
about. I findGoffman's disinclination towres
tlewith such problems frustrating.
The Presentation of Self firstpublished in
1959, was Goffman's first book. Itwas suc
ceeded by a dazzling variety of others, each
and every one of them a major achievement. I
don't think he coped fullywith the range of
problems I have noted above, but he elaborat
ed brilliantly on many of the observations and

insights introduced inPresentation 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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Of S Lf 295
ON R R RDINGTH Pfl S NTflTION
fulldisplay inhis analysis, but he left it to oth
ers to supply thewider developmental context
inwhich such institutionscame intobeing and

evolved. Itwas Michel Foucault (1975) who

most persuasively showed how total organiza
tions connect towider processes of modern

ization and to power.

In one ofmy 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 thosewho 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

social continuity and order

depend; yet somehow itall more or less holds
together, even now that our interdependence
with others is inmany ways worldwide.
upon which

R F R NC S
Norbert.

Elias,

1969. The Civilizing

Blackwell.

Process.

2 vol

umes. Oxford, UK:

and Gregory W. H.
Fine, Gary Alan, Philip Manning,
Smith, eds. 2000. Erving Goffman. 4 volumes.
London, UK: Sage.
1975. Discipline
The
and Punish:
Foucault, Michel.
Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House.
1988.
Anthony.
Social
Theorist."

Giddens,

"Goffman

Goffman: Exploring
ed by Paul Drew

as a Systematic
in Erving

250-79

Pp.
the Interaction
and

Anthony

edit

Order,

Wootton.

UK: Polity.
[1959] 1990. The Presentation
Erving.
Self inEveryday Life. New York: Penguin.
1961. Asylums. New York: Doubleday.

Cambridge,
Goffman,

1929. La civilisation
Granet, Marcel.
France: Editions Albin Michel.
John F. 1990. Rudeness

Kasson,

in Nineteenth-Century
York: Hill and Wang.
Scheff,

Thomas

Sociological

J.

1999.

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chinoise.

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and Civility: Manners

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III: A
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Gruyter.

Anthony Giddens is a member of theHouse of Lords, a Fellow ofKing's College, Cambridge, and
Emeritus Professor at theLondon School ofEconomics. He was Director of theLSE 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 honoraryfellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, theRussian
Academy ofScience, and theChinese Academy of Social Sciences. He was theBBC Reith Lecturer in
1999. According toGoogle Scholar, he is themost widely cited sociologist in theworld. His many
books include The Constitution of Society (1984), Beyond Left and Right (1994), The ThirdWay
(1998), and Europe in theGlobal Age (2006). His most recentmajor work isThe Politics of Climate
Change (2009). His books have been translated intomore thanforty languages.

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