Goffman As Dramaturgical Prophet

Notes Introduction: Faces on the Stage and Faces in the Stalls 1. Alas, the use of the theater loophole to allow smoking was blocked by the Minnesota Court of Appeals. (Kaiser, n.pag.) 1 The Subject is Performance: Goffman as Dramaturgical Prophet 1. Actually, Gouldner might more accurately describe Goffman as posing indi- viduals as holding ‘sign-value,’ referring here to the concept first raised by Baudrillard in For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign and further developed in The Mirror of Production. 2. Interestingly, Habermas’ critique of Goffman is remarkably similar to Goffman’s similar treatment of George Herbert Mead. 3. This is echoed in the analysis of the German philosopher Ernst Tugendhat (who admittedly is dealing with the Meadian rather than the Goffmanian use of ‘role’), who describes role positions as ‘meaning offers,’ stressing the semiotic/hermeneutic dimensions of role-play (p. 243). 4. This example is of special interest given the importance that childhood play is given in the formation of the self within the pragmatist tradition. Mead repeatedly invokes play as an initial exploration of otherness by the devel- oping social self and, despite Goffman’s aforementioned critique of Mead, he was clearly influenced by the pragmatist tradition (especially as processed through Blumer and Cooley). That role distance is a part of these early play experiences is certainly provocative in this light, suggesting the doubleness of role-play would also be constitutive of selfhood. 5. Fredric Jameson, in a 1974 review of Frame Analysis for Theory and Society, also cites ‘key’ as the most interesting of Goffman’s conceptual contribu- tions in the book; while my understanding of the key is rather different from Jameson’s, I want to acknowledge a shared appreciation here. More recently, the well-known sociolinguist George Lakoff has noted the influence of Frame Analysis on his theorization on the production of political meaning. 6. In a footnote of his own, Goffman admits that, musicologically, ‘key’ is perhaps not as apt as ‘mode’ for the process he is describing, but I agree with Goffman that the technical aspects of the concept are less significant than its cultural-symbolic character (see 1974, p. 44). 7. It is worth noting that Goffman expressed a good deal of reservation about pragmatism (esp. Mead) and attempted to distance himself from an orthodox pragmatist position. In any case, Goffman’s avoidance of much explicit philosophical analysis (as noted) makes his relationship to any established school of thought difficult to identify precisely. 191 192 Notes 8. As I have previously argued, Mead’s position here bears a very interesting resemblance to Foucault’s analysis of classical forms of subjectivity, particularly as the latter is interpreted by Gilles Deleuze (see Bailey, pp. 26–27). 9. Another important perspective here, one that would link Mead and Goffman both chronologically and in theoretical terms, would be that of Kenneth Burke, who analyzes role-play in literary and rhetorical terms. For an interesting treatment of Burke’s relationship to Goffman, see Joseph Gusfeld’s excellent introduction to the 1989 anthology Kenneth Burke on Symbols and Society. 10. Goffman’s analysis of ‘face’ issues is intriguing in light of Raffel’s critique, of course, as Levinas placed great stress on the importance of the face in the engagement with otherness. 11. In Stigma, Goffman offers an extensive discussion of communities of ‘sympa- thetic others’ built on a shared Stigma and, as noted, his sense of the ‘courtesy stigma’ poses the relative portability (and thus symbolic character) or a range of stigmatic phenomena (see pp. 19–32, especially). 2 Performance Anxiety: Role-ing with Lacan 1. Interestingly, Terry Eagleton makes a very similar point in contrasting Lacan’s notion of subjectivity with that of his purported follower Louis Althusser, arguing that Althusser fails to recognize—through a rather elementary mis- reading that confuses the ego with the subject—the complexity of the Lacanian subject (pp. 144–45). 2. Although as Sharpe notes, Jacques Derrida spots a considerable existential bent in much of Lacan’s work, dedicating some of his encomium ‘For the Love of Lacan’ to this point. 3. Here, I would recognize Žižek’s important analysis of Lacan’s relationship with a post-structural model of subjectivity (or ‘subject-positions’ as opposed to subjects) in which he argues, quite convincingly, that Lacan is not positing the former but rather retaining a more coherent notion of the subject, albeit as ‘lack’ (1989, pp. 174–76). 4. As Žižek points out in a discussion of the Hegelian dimensions of Lacanian analytic practice, Lacan defines the final stage of analysis as ‘subjective des- titution,’ in which the ‘subject no longer presupposes himself as subject’ and refuses the symbolization of the real that makes subjective existence possible. 5. It is important to note that Lacan’s position on the curative possibilities (and even the possibility as such) of ‘true speech’ shifted throughout his career and indeed his overall view of the alienation intrinsic to the act of speech evolves significantly over the course of the seminars. I am largely sidestepping many of the nuances of these shifts in thinking, but I wish to avoid the impression that there is a single, monolithic sense of the social-symbolic dynamics of speech in his work. 6. Indeed, for Lacan psychosis is a sort of language disorder that results from a failure to pass through symbolic castration and a resolution of the Oedipus complex, and one that is marked by a profound instability and an ‘asymbolic’ existence. Notes 193 7. Berger mentions that ‘when these suspicions [regarding the symbolic orga- nization of existence] invade the central areas of consciousness they take on, of course, the constellations that modern society would call neurotic or psychotic,’ thus echoing Lacan at a more clinical level as well (p. 23). 8. Of course, Lacan’s ideas are often seen in a rather different light and, like Rank, Lacan was cast out of orthodox circles, being expelled from the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1963. 9. Interestingly, Rank’s reflections on homosexual desire and art and Lacan’s connection of homosexuality, particularly female homosexuality, and hyste- ria have a strong similarity, despite the former coming long after Rank’s break with Freud (at least partly over the centrality of sexuality in the Freudian position) (see Rank, pp. 52–58). 3 Liquid Stages and Melting Frames: Objective De-Stabilization 1. Lauren Langman’s ‘Alienation and Everyday Life: Goffman Meets Marx at the Shopping Mall’, which extensively engages Baudrillard’s thought, is an exception, although the author connects the two theorists in a manner very different from my own. 2. I should mention that this is not the first attempt to place Baudrillard alongside psychoanalysis, as in Charles Levin’s admirable essay ‘Power and Seduction: Baudrillard, Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis.’ However, Levin’s interest is in Winnicott’s object-relations psychoanalytic paradigm and also in Baudrillard’s early work (indeed being quite hostile to the later writing). 3. There is an interesting overlap here with the thinking of the contemporary Heideggerean philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, author of What Computers Can’t Do: The Limits of Artificial Intelligence and a revised edition entitled What Com- puters Still Can’t Do. Dreyfus argues that attempts at artificial intelligence will fail because they are unable to take into account the embodied character of human thought and are ultimately reliant upon a model of thought as information. 4. Badiou’s book on Deleuze, The Clamor of Being, deals extensively with the latter’s relationship with Heidegger. Badiou poses Deleuze’s philosophical work as a radical extension of much of Heidegger’s thinking. This is a controver- sial position, but one that I find compelling and quite justified. Žižek’s Organs without Bodies tries to reread Deleuze in a Hegelian-Lacanian framework (a radical reading, to be sure), but recognizes the major conflicts in the relationship of the two thinkers. 5. The influence of Sartre on Baudrillard is rarely acknowledged in its fullness, but certainly emerges from a full encounter with the corpus of his work. 4 From Looking to Being to Killing: Performance Anxiety in Recent French Language Cinema 1. Contemporary European systems of film production can render a precise national identification for a film difficult, so ‘French’ here is shorthand for 194 Notes films in the French language that examine issues germane to contemporary French culture. 2. ‘Theorizing’ here is understood along the lines developed by Alan Blum in his titular book, with theory as an opening of conversation, of the initiation of a dialogue. 3. Interestingly, Bordwell has been engaged in a particularly vituperative intel- lectual exchange with Slavoj Žižek over the relative merits of ‘cognitivist’ and psychoanalytic strategies for analyzing films. It is perhaps significant that the films of Kieslowski (as interpreted by Žižek in his 2001 book, The Fright of Real Tears) were central to the latter’s attacks on Bordwell’s position regarding the weaknesses and dogmatism of psychoanalytic film theory. 4. It is unclear (and probably irrelevant) whether or not Haneke intended this replication as an homage or a more neutral borrowing. Interestingly, the ending of Lynch’s earlier Blue Velvet replicates a scene from Luis Bunuel’s Susana in a similar manner. 5. At least initially, as the nature of the video images become increasingly intense and horrifying in Lost Highway. 6. 1999’s The Straight Story is an exception. 7. Arquette plays both ordinary Renee Madison and femme fatale Alice Wakefield, a strategy repeated with Naomi Watts playing Betty Elms and Diane Selwyn in Mulholland Drive.

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