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SELF-ESTRANGEMENT
IN DRAMATURGICAL SOCIETY
With John Welsh
CHAPTER NINE
Introduction These contributions to dramaturgical sociology
emphasize (1) the addition of a macro-analytic
perspective and (2) the necessity of more closely aligning
dramaturgical analyses with the critical tradition in sociology.
In this essay as in others, the attempt is to constitute a critical dramaturgy which adds to the more academic dramaturgy of Goffman and his followers in that it seeks to undercover and transform the unauthentic, alienative and exploitative practices of the dramaturgical society. The fundamental problematic of an alienated use of dramaturgy remains the false, fraudulent and engineered separation of objective and subjective reality.
The central problematic in this essay is self-estrangement. One part of this problematic is found in the dynamics which separate self from society. The other half of the problematic is to be found in the dynamics which lead the individual to distance him or herself from the social roles which they embody.
Most of the essays in this collection have spoken to the factors which tend to rend the individual from the social base of the society in which it is born. Yet from another point of view, individuals have good reason to use dramaturgy to communicate a distaste, a lack of enthusiasm; a repugnance for the things they do.
The Mutable Self as the Mutilated Self. The dramaturgical apprehension of self, with the work of Goffman as its exemplar, is based upon the sociology of George Herbert Mead, yet it is a marked departure from the tradition sociological notion of self. Mead conceived of the self as the ongoing product of social interaction but he also conceived of the self as the pretest for social action.
Using the dramatic metaphor, Lyman and Scott (1975:104) have suggested that the self, as viewed by Mead, is a playwright, a director, an actor, a cast of players, an audience and a critic. The self is a playwright in that it determines its capacities and needs, and attempts to establish the plot of an ensuing scene. The self is a director in that it rehearses a scene in the "theatre of the mind" before it is externalized as a social performance.
The self is an actor since it imaginatively performs in the prefigured scene with the imagined performance #f the other actors in the scene. The self is also a cast of players since it acts out all of the roles of all the other players in the scene, which is usually discussed in terms of Mead's idea of the internal conversation of the two characters, the "I" and the "me." As audience, the self watches the scene and as critic it evaluates the scene, judging the efficacy, morality and potential of what transpires. Given a certain level of satisfaction with what is likely to happen, the self then sets out to perform in the external "theatre of reality."
Mead's view of the self thus entails a theater of the mind in that the person possesses the ability to determine a course of action and to act it out. In no way does this negate his view that the self is an outcome of social interaction. Instead, the Meadian view is that the self is a dialectical process which emerges out of the interaction between individual and society, subjective and objective reality. In Mead's view, the self is a pretest which unfolds in the theater of reality and eventually coincides with the text of the external theater.
Mead's social psychology is, of course, more involved and complex than the brief presentation paraphrased from Lyman and Scott. However, enough has been said to establish the departures from this traditional model of self that the dramaturgical apprehension poses, especially as it has been presented by Goffman (1959).
The fundamental difference between the symbolic interaction of Mead and that of Goffman is that "in Goffman's dramaturgy, the ultimate aim of the naturalistic dramas played out in the theater of reality is to uncover the hidden drama, and the real actors, in the secret theater of the mind" (Lyman and Scott 1975:107).
Lacking in Mead is sensitivity to the estrangement between mind in the "theater of the mind" and the social self as it is later played in the "theater of reality." Lacking in Lyman and Scott is a sensitivity to the social sources...the economic advantages...of such estrangement.
In Goffman's sociology, there is a difference between the essential self and the presented self, and it is the presented self that becomes the object of social response in dramaturgical society; the essential self becomes subordinated to the presented self. It is clear in Goffman's sociology of the self, that the only self that can be discussed is that which is publicly known, that which is overtly acted out in the audience of others.
In Mead's "theater of the mind," the essential self, which includes the person's intentionality and consciousness, is less relevant and must be made subordinate to the so-called "theater of reality." What is important is not whether Goffman is an apologist for this view of self, but the human consequences of this form of the self in the dramaturgical society.
Those who are caught up in a social role in which the theatre of reality is hostile to the human project is, at some level of awareness, rendered shameful by the things that are done by self and partners. The shabbiness of such a drama is not lost on the actors themselves. There are a thousand small ways by which the agonizing actor can let others know of the bitter taste exploitation and manipulation leave in the mouth. There are a hundred hollow-sounding justifications that one can use to narcotize one's conscience. There are many doors left open in most social occasions through which one can depart as soon as possible to more human and humane occupations. But until then, one must show when it counts, that one is not committed to such a social encounter as a moral agent.
The self, in the alienated use of dramaturgy, ultimately requires that the inner reality of the person be estranged from the outer-reality of the external theater. However, the estrangement of the self in dramaturgical society implies other assaults against a competent, non-alienated self which must be noted.
First, Goffman recognizes in the dramaturgical society that it is possible for actors to deliberately stage the images or impressions that the audience receives. Once the estrangement of these two theaters is made, the question of whether these staged impressions are authentic or not is not really important in the dramaturgical society. In fact, in dramaturgical society authenticity is a completely moot issue. What matters is only whether the presentations are creditable. In the dramaturgical society, the person is reduced to a mask. To mask means to disguise and to disguise means to mystify.
The dramaturgical society, in its alienated form, is one
which depends upon mystification and the control of
consciousness, whether the actor happens to be an
individual, a corporation or the state.
The second implication is important to self estrangement and best summed up by Goffman himself. The self presented and the self taken is not the same self that dwells within the self-system of the individual actor...that private self, known only to the actor, does not emerge out of symbolic interaction on stage. At the same time, the self created on stage does not help create the reality, it is merely an illusion used by the private self to engineer the activity of a customer, a voter, a worker or a client:
While this image is entertained concerning the individual, so
that a self is imputed to him, this self itself does not
derive from its possessor, but from the whole scene of his
action. . . . A correctly staged and performed scene leads the
audience to impute a self to a performed character, but this
imputation - this self - is a product of a scene that comes
of, and is not a cause of it (1959:252).
This viewpoint, and the reality of the dramaturgical society, is merely Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum" turned inside out: You think, therefore I am. Those who live in the Hollywoods of the world must deal with this false image on a daily basis...sometimes it becomes so painful; so remote from anything that the Hollywoodized individuals feels or thinks or does or is...that they engage in 'self' destructive behavior. Their message is, I want to be more than or different from what it is that you are thinking. I want to be more than the image of an esteemed person; I want to have some content that answers to the publicly projected image; I want the image to answer to the inner self.
Men have a very difficult time living up to the macho role assigned by a patriarchal society. They die emotionally, mentally and physically in the effort to unite self and image of self. Some become hostile and violent to men who reject the image. Some reject the image and don other, more alienating masks. Some find a niche in society in which they can live in peace with women and in mutual respect and support.
But those who do not reflect upon the magnitude of the distance between the word and the deed live in a twilight world; live in a mysterious world; live in the Kafkasqueian world of bluff and doubt. Estrangement is a complex response to such impossible worlds; worlds where the scripts contain heroes, fools, charlatans, and frauds. It is healthy enough to walk away from such theatre of reality.
The Negation of Self in Everyday Life Nowhere is the alienation and dehumanization of the dramaturgical society more evident than in the phenomenon of role distance. Role distance (Goffman 1961b:85-152) refers to the widespread phenomenon of individuals giving off impressions that they are not really part of the social occasion at hand. Person distance themselves from the role that they are playing with a wink, a nod, or a grimace. They make it clear to others present that they feel the occasion alienating but will not, dare not challenge it.
In the classroom, one student will roll his eyes at something the professor will say; in the clinic a nurse will shrug her shoulders to convey to a doctor her contempt for a mother whose baby is ill; at the high school dance, a popular boy will make a face while dancing with an unpopular girl in order to convince his watching friends that he is not 'really' there as a serious partner to the girl...thus does the use of role distance betray the social occasion while protecting the inner self from social control or social consequence for that betrayal.
Role distance is a pretheoretical form of rebellion and resistance to alienated education, alienated work, alienated class relations, or alienated sexuality. Role distance is a technique one can adopt to present one self to others situationally present while subjective person retaining, hiding from public view, another, more cynical, less social self.
There are any number of conditions in which a person would deliberately estrange self from society.
A first example here would be a woman who is wary of the traditional subordination of the feminine role but who becomes married and acts out the traditional role on the objective level, in view of her husband, while subjectively retaining the self- affirmation that "This is not me. I am only acting this way. Whatever I am, it is something other than my overtly submissive act." It is understandable why a woman might act in the invidious sense of acting if the husband were a tyrant and the wife did not have the resources to oppose or to leave the marriage.
Masterpiece Theatre dramatized a play by Vita Sackville-West, with the curious title, All Passion Spent, in which a certain Lady Slane gave all the usual performances for 85 years: wife, hostess, patroness of the arts, mother, member of the nobility, and consort to the Ambassador Slane. When the Ambassador died, Lady Slane took command of her own presentments; purchased a small house and took on a series of friends for themselves. She departed the artifices of decent society much to the dismay of her older children. When she died, her friends were there but her family not. At some point, we all must ask whether we want to wait 85 years to reunite the private and the public performances we give.
Then there are those who live in a simple world where image and reality have some close correspondence...and then finds themselves in a more mirrored world. That person may seek to assert some independence from the role. When management of a corporation recruits or promotes a worker to its administrative echelon there is a problem of the conflict between the old and the new presentments of self. The ex-worker who has left the status and solidarity of her/his fellows may come to feel uncomfortable with both management and with workers; such a person may try to demonstrate on the objective level that nothing has really changed, that s/he is still the same person.
The subjective feelings belie the presentation as the new manager realizes that the new status and role sever the solidarity and demand that managerial and exploitative behaviors replace the former human, reciprocal behaviors of an equal. The new manager cannot change the logics of the labor process but can put forward an image of role distance when superiors are not around to see it. The new manager tries to have both: the pay and power of office together with the warmth and support of solidarity. S/he remains the class enemy in spite of his small gauge efforts at rebellion.
A recent movie juggled modes of self estrangement and role distancing in comedic plot. In Big Business, two sisters...putative twins...inherit a company bought up Megacorp. The Bette Midler character feigned unification with her public presentments when in the bucolic world of Hometown, Indiana. In New York, the Bette Midler character loved the stage managing and role playing...self and society were twinborn in the latter setting but were estranged in the former. The reverse was dramatized by the Lily Tomlin character. For her, self and society were twinborn in Indiana but were divorced in New York New York. To be sure, the Lily Tomlin world view prevails and all ends well...or does it.
Role distance may be resorted to as an attempt to present to others a self that has complete mastery over the role the person is performing. The coolness of a surgeon who tells jokes during a delicate operation tends to present a self to the audience of assistants that will inform them that all is under control and they can be at ease. In the final analysis, the doctor may be indifferent to the fate of the patient as long as the cases keep coming to help fund a portfolio or to finance a mistress but for public display, a visible effort to keep a team focussed yet relaxed is good business.
Chevy Chase has played a series of roles in which the protagonist projected a competent, masterful self image...only to be undone by the simplest task; walking downstairs, mixing a drink or finding a criminal. This ploy is reversed in some cinema exploring self estrangement. The Columbo character played by Peter Falk feigned simplicity in order to disarm and to entrap the felon.
Role distance may be a way to protect one's career, material interests, and family obligations and yet salvage some slight measure of self-esteem by presenting the "happy consciousness" of the cheerful robot while on the job with work superiors as the audience.
A number of examples exist here but consider the case of a lower level functionary in a corporation or a university who has a family to feed, shelter and clothe. The overwhelming power of market relations, the work organization and its managerial elite may intimidate the person to the extent that self-integrity may be sacrificed on the objective level so that the person and family can continue to survive in a material sense.
On returning home at night, the functionary inveighs against this estrangement of self but goes to work at several levels of being the next morning. Concrete examples abound, but it seemed to have escaped the scrutiny of the academic dramaturgist.
Goffman's discussion is an especially enlightening example of the dilettantish approach of depoliticized dramaturgists to alienated behavior such as role distance. Given the profound and almost overwhelming problems the world faces; given the human and social problems indicated by the concept "role distance," Goffman ignores the critical dimensions of the concept.
A critical perspective, one concerned with human well-being and opposed to obstacles to such, must enquire about the type of society in which persons adopt the cynical performance of roles and effectively estrange their objective activity from self.
Goffman, however, talks about merry-go-rounds and merry-go- round role distancing behavior to illustrate his concept. Completely absent, again, is any hint that role distance might indicate that persons are attempting to salvage any personal integrity from the degrading onslaughts of an exploitative society.
In his discussion of "Role Distance and Serious Activity," his attempt is to establish that role distance can emerge out of the lack of challenge that a task offers the person and that people often mock their own activity by presenting the foolish dimensions of that activity by "fooling around."
Goffman's explorations of role distance in Encounters is also inadequate. He does present a brief paragraph on role distance and subordinate-superordinate relations. He has only three sentences on this very significant issue, the most penetrating of which is,
"Sullenness, muttering, irony, joking and sarcasm
may all allow one to show something of oneself lies
outside the role within whose jurisdiction the
moment occurs" (1961b:131).
Period; end of analysis about the stratification of power in such relationships.
Other literature on role distance is little, if any, more satisfying for those of a critical persuasion. There are papers and articles concerning role distance and such topics as jazz musicians (Stebbins 1969:406-15), but clerks, waitresses, prostitutes, professors and physicians all feign an interest in others mediated by private concerns of time and profit. Their behavior is not analyzed nor reported in the literature on role distance.
The dramaturgical focus on merry-go-rounds, horseback riding and jazz musicians as examples of role distance serves to trivialize and to legitimate the social relations giving rise to role distance and those resulting from it. The task of a critical dramaturgy is to draw out the repressive and exploitative dimension of such phenomena. To the critical sociologist, the fact that persons see fit to perform the role cynically or to disassociate self from their objective activity constitutes a very serious social and human problem.
A situation in which the person must put on a happy face before a superordinate in order to keep a job and feed a family is certainly familiar and the role distancing behaviors expressed are certainly understandable. However, an adequate sociological method also includes a discussion of the larger social conditions which contribute to the dehumanization of persons.
The critical approach to dramaturgy helps people question the legitimacy of social relations which provide the stage for the estrangement of self from role. If the social relations demand that persons sacrifice their integrity--indeed, even the authorship of their behavior--on the objective level, then in what sense can the vital interconnection between self and society be said to exist?
Role distance can be interpreted as evidence that the vital interconnection between self and society is severed with exploitative social relations or when powerful others are given all prerogatives to control behavior on the objective level.
There is a similarity to role distance as an adaptive strategy to oppressive external conditions and Marx's phenomenology of religion. Marx (1978:131) noted that religion was an expression of protest, though inverted, against the real material conditions of capitalist society. Role distance can be interpreted as an inverted protest against the real, material conditions of drama-
turgical society. Goffman does not raise the possibility that role distance may be the "sigh of the oppressed creature or the heart of a heartless situation."
As with religion, role distance is an opium of the people when it will enable people to be free of the oppressive external conditions only within a fantastically, subjectively inner space and not on the objective level. Such an understanding of role distance leads us to consider other possibilities, other social relations and, more dangerously, the means to revolutionize self and society.
It is also valuable to draw from Marx's (1964:110-112) theory of alienation a deeper insight into the dehumanizing nature of role distance. Recall from The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 that Marx discussed, as one form of alienation in capitalist society, the estrangement of the worker from his/her act of production. Marx reasoned that since work in capitalist society is, for the worker, primarily a means of survival, the motivation for the activity has nothing at all in common with its objective content. The means of production do not belong to the worker nor does the product belong to the worker. Consequently, this signifies that in the process of work the worker's activity does not belong to the self but to another:
If my activity and the objects resulting therefrom
do not belong to me, they must belong to another;
they must be other's property, not mine.
As in the Marxist view of alienation, a critical view of role distance emphasizes that one's objective activity does not belong to the actor but to the audience. The lower level functionary does not behave overtly as s/he covertly feels but estranges the two for the benefit of the external audience. The dialectics of praxis are lost; the dialectics of self and society are lost in this form of dramaturgy.
Of course, the actor may benefit in some way from the degradation of the sacrifice of integrity or the estrangement of self and role. This moral adjustment is a mistake only to the extent that rebellion, resistance and the revolutionary overthrow of the oppressive social relations exist as realistic alternatives for the person. For most people, oppressive social relations are a fact of life that offers a devil's choice:
Be still, be still, my soul;
it is but for a season:
Let us endure the hour
and see injustice done.
We, of a certainty, are not the first
have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled
our hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed
whatever Brute or Blackguard made the world.
...Housman
The negation of self is scarcely a theoretically informed way to respond to the negation of praxis in the world of work. The task becomes, for the critical dramaturgist, to make the revolution possible and the negation of the negation congenial to the human condition.
Role distance represents a form of the unauthentic performance of roles in that the person employing role distancing techniques presents an appearance of the role as the other expects or compels it to be performed. The role is performed "as it should be" from the standpoint of the other, but not from the standpoint of the person. Intentionality, self-determination, as well as sociality are lost as moments of praxis in such a use of role distance.
Self determination no longer exists as the person expressing distance between self and role does not claim them as her/his own. The person who acts cynically attempts to convince self and others that s/he is not the author of the act. Intentionality is lost since the act is not freely chosen by self, but is the result of the external conditions, the demands of the audience.
Role distance is a form of bad faith in that it results in a claim that the act does not belong to self. The atrocities committed by a Lt. Calley and the Nazi functionaries are excused by appealing to role distance and the social situation producing it. It was not my fault; I was only obeying orders...I had no choice, I had to do these things since we were at war...if it were me, I would never have done such a thing. Such are the self serving uses of role distance.
The organization man/woman who recognizes the destructive nature of the capitalist product but who goes along to get along with the system and work superiors for the privatized gains of career, salary and promotions is not acting as an authentic person but has reduced self to an externally directed object and helps to reproduce the perfidious outcomes of such social relations. The social, human imperative for the person is that whatever benefits which may accrue from the self-mutilation, the estrangement of self from role is not worth it!
If one no longer authors one's own activity, if one deliberately mutilates self for material gain, then one loses self and one exists only at the level of an animal--a comfortable one, perhaps, but an animal nevertheless. For the person who is mutilated as such, questions of self-realization may become altogether irrelevant and the person will seek further escape from the onslaughts through drugs, religion, alcohol, soap operas, privatized sex, jogging or any number of anodynes to psychic pain.
In confronting alienated dramaturgy in role distance there remains a clear-cut distinction between three ways in which actors can orient themselves toward repressive, alienative role requirements.
First, actors can automatically and uncritically adapt to
the external conditions. In this case, the person will
take on, subjectively, the reified identity which is
externally imposed. One can be immersed in such a false
presentation of self and earn the contempt of one's co-
workers.
Second, actors can adopt the technique of role distance,
retaining their subjective integrity while overtly
conforming to the repressive role requirements.
Third, people may respond to repressive, alienating role
requirements with theoretically informed modes of resistance.
The best examples of the later are when the person attempts openly and critically to change and to reinterpret the role requirements; those who attempt to band with others to build up systems of alternative roles. This often means that one becomes part of an underground structure of resistance and rebellion.
Social workers often systematically violate bureaucratic rules in the effort to get food, clothing, health care and medicine to their clients. Teachers often act with mercy rather than with rational calculation when they find students cheating or experimenting with drugs. Workers often sabotage superiors who too enthusiastically enforce the rules of bureau or factory.
These emancipatory examples are effective protests against the alienation in dramaturgical society as they affirm that actors can transcend their roles sincerely and authentically. This possibility is degraded by the dramaturgical ideologists who attempt to maintain that the sincere actor is one who is "engulfed by the role" or "taken in by one's own act." To be sincere in an insincere world is to be an imbecile.
From the critical standpoint, sincerity and authenticity are not to be denigrated but encouraged as it is only with the sincere performance of roles that the wedge between the objective and subjective worlds can be removed. With the sincere orientation to role performance the actor acts "authentically." The role becomes a free and genuine expression of the self on an objective level. But before one praises sincerity, one must help transform the objective conditions which betray those who are sincere to those who are not.
Those who do perform roles authentically contribute in a very real way to the overthrow of oppressive social formations. Even in a racist world, a sexist world, an exploitative social life world, open and energetic commitment to alienating roles help demystify...and thus provide the grounds for critical, transforming analysis and perhaps, social change.
Such a society cannot exist without pain and despair among those at the lower echelons. Being a Nazi or being a bureaucrat becomes increasingly alien to the human condition for those at the bottom of the stratification system. When a critical number of the lower level functionaries and the surplus population begin to present the "unhappy consciousness" rather than the cheerful robot routine, the society will be forced to change to a more humane form.
Role Distance and Revolution Role distance is a variable phenomenon. In actuality, there is rarely either complete identification with a role or complete estrangement from a role. It is this variable nature of role distance that gives the phenomenon an emancipatory potential. The dialectic of identification and estrangement can result in a qualitative change making rebellion and resistance real possibilities.
In any event, some role distance is a necessary condition for the opposition to and change of oppressive social relations, even though it serves to maintain these relations on the objective level. Forms of rebellion and emancipation always depend upon some measure of the subterranean individualism and revolution about which role distance speaks. If people are always totally there, if they completely identify with their role performance, change cannot occur. As Hans Peter Dreitzel (1976:132) points out:
While role distance is a condition for survival in the
internal relation between person and role, in the outward
relation between person and society it is the condition of
change. In maintaining a distance from one's role identities,
one creates the space and range of reflection that enables one
to reject roles if necessary and to think of alternative
roles. Rebellions are never begun by the most indigent of the
lot.
Role distance is evidence that the person is not entirely what s/he appears to be, that the person is not totally constrained by the internal shackles. Thus, even the most sycophantic of organizational people do not accept as legitimate this objective behavior and threaten to change it to a form which they feel is legitimate.
In the process of emancipation, role distance is that necessary moment which comes between Uncle Tom and Nat Turner. Role distance is evidence that the powerful can no longer rely on the internal shackles, that the old rationalizations or ideologies no longer work. Consequently, role distancing behaviors adumbrate alienation but are not the source of revolution.
It is when the powerful can no longer rely on the internal shackles of their minions that the continuation of their power is tenuous. The flight of Marcos and Papa Doc Duvalier came in the same moment as those around them began to reunite subjective states and objective embodiments of contempt and disgust. As we reach the final days of that moral vacuum which has come to be labeled "the Reagan era," we may see the teflon crumble and the image fade. History and his insiders will not deal kindly with the Reagan era.
Praxis and Revolution Praxis results in the reunification of the
objective and subjective worlds. As such,
the concept of praxis is the opposite of the alienation offered by
the mutable self and role distance. Marx conceived of authentic
human activity as being the unification of thought and action, of
theory and practice, of self and society.
In his Theses on Feuerbach (1972), Marx critiqued both the materialists for their one-sided reduction of human activity to the unreflective response of external stimuli and the idealists for their one-sided reduction of human activity to thought which is never realized in overt, concrete action.
I have presented an over view of the moments of praxis in the last essay. For our purposes here, praxis is a complex activity by which persons in interaction create society and culture and constitute themselves as human beings. Praxis behavior centers around sociality as its primal moment. We have seen the privatism of dramaturgical society as illustrated in the phenomena of the mutable self and role distance. We have also seen the destructiveness of privatism for self and other.
In work, people who are oriented to sociality are careful that their activity enrich the lives of others and contribute to the socially necessary production of goods and services. In other human activity, people who are oriented to sociality are careful that their communications about self and the external environment are free and undistorted. Praxis establishes intersubjectivity and warm and supportive links with other humans. In dramaturgical mass society what is materially produced and symbolically communicated are irrelevant as long as they result in profit and political control.
Sociality precludes the use of one's abilities to produce harmful goods, dangerous goods, ecological poisons or to create and to cater to false needs. Sociality precludes to use of symbols to manipulate and control the information and consciousness of others. In a fraudulent dramaturgy, activity and interaction are oriented toward profit and manipulation, and encourage such insult to self, society and environment.
Self-realization is a second essential moment of praxis. It is that activity in which one realizes the full wealth of one's potential. Self-realization is opposed to a mutable self which insists that the self change to suit the external situation, and by role distance, which insists that there need be no connection at all between the self and the objective activity.
Self-realization requires a trans-situational self. Such a
self presents the same values, the same fidelities, the same faces
of self across all encounters. Mediated by concretely existing
economic, political or economic factors, the trans-situational self
brings to bear those values, those fidelities and embodies a line
of behavior and affect which expresses the dialectics of a well
tempered life. One is faithful to one's self and as Polonius put
it,
To thine own self be true
and it follows as surely
as the night doth follow the day
that thou cans't then be false
to no man.
Persons are coerced into adopting self-effacing and self- denigrating strategies to survive in stratified and massified society. If they fail to give off impressions of enthusiasm and energy; if they fail to give the expected deference pattern; if they fail to wear the public mask of compliance, they are subject to a wide variety of sanctions including even, psychiatric labeling and therapy.
A fully human, fully social, fully participatory model, that is an authentically socialist model, of self is oriented toward activity that affirms, not destroys mind, self, society and the connection between these. Such a model of self and role requires a specific kind of society.
Praxis Society It cannot be a class society, a mass society, or a
society which transfers alienation to women, to
minorities or to other sectors of its own population or to other
societies. A society can claim for itself the title "socialist"
when these moments of praxis are possible for each human being in
coordinated democratically organized self-managed work groups.
Social revolution requires the elimination of those structural features of a society which obstruct, distort or negate the self and falsify role performance. The human process requires that each person have access to the material basis with which to sustain life, the social basis with which to form social relations, and the symbolic basis with which to create self and culture.
A society in which role distance and the mutable self are adopted by individuals as means for survival is not a rational nor a decent society. It cannot be a society which is adequate for the grounding of a stable and competent self system. It is not a society to which individuals owe any loyalty. It is a society which depends upon the mutilation, objectification and alienation of individuals and, as such, it is an infectious, stultifying cancer which deserves nothing but an expedient death and a quick burial.
With the demise of the counterfeit community of the dramaturgical society; with adequate theory and research; with a strong democracy of the sort Bernard Barber speaks, a more human and rational social formation will emerge and once again permit the unification of self and society in mutually ennobling modes.
The Man with the Hoe
Bowed with the weight of centuries he leans upon his hoe and gazes at the ground, the emptiness of ages in his face, and on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair, a thing that grieves not and that never hopes, stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? Whose was the hand that slanted back the brow? Whose the breath that blew out the light within his brain?
Is this the thing the Lord God made and gave to trace the stars and search the heavens for power; to feel the passing of eternity?
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns and marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, is this the handiwork you give to God, the monstrous thing distorted and soul quenched?
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, how will the Future reckon with this man?
How answer his brute question in the hour when whirlwind of rebellion shake the shore?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings; with those who shaped him to the thing he is; when this dumb terror shall rise to judge the world, after the silence of the centuries?
...Markham
Before the War, the World was illusory, Romantic Idolatry dominated Politics. In place of illusion, we now have the idea of revolution--not only in life, but also on stage; above all on stage.
...Felix Siege, German theatre critic
in the '20s
