Any group of persons – prisoners, primitives, pilots, or patients – develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful, reasonable and normal once you get close to it.
Erving GoffmanRead
A performer may be taken in by his own act, convinced at the moment that the impression of reality which he fosters is the one and only reality. In such cases we have a sense in which the performer comes to be his own audience; he comes to be performer and observer of the same show. Presumably he introcepts or incorporates the standards he attempts to maintain in the presence of others so that even in their absence his conscience requires him to act in a socially proper way.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote explores how individuals can become immersed in their own roles, blurring the lines between performance and reality.
In this quote, Erving Goffman discusses the concept of self-presentation and how individuals, particularly performers, can become so engrossed in their roles that they begin to believe in the reality they create. This phenomenon leads to a duality where the performer becomes both the one who acts and the one who observes, internalizing social standards and expectations to maintain a socially acceptable persona, even when no one is watching.
Themes
PerformanceRealitySelf-PresentationSocial StandardsIdentity
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the impact of social media on self-identity, this quote can highlight how users curate their online personas.
More from Erving Goffman
All quotes →And to the degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others.
Erving GoffmanRead
When a stranger comes into our presence, then, first appearances are likely to enable us to anticipate his category and attributes, his 'social identity' - to use a term that is better than 'social status' because personal attributes such as 'honesty' are involved, as well as structural ones, like 'occupation.'
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I assume that the proper study of interaction is not the individual and his psychology, but rather the syntactical relations among the acts of different persons mutually present to another.
Erving GoffmanRead
Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each man may like his cell.
Erving GoffmanRead
By definition, of course, we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human. On this assumption we exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his life chances.
Erving GoffmanRead
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