Goffman Against Postmodernism: Emotion and the Reality of the Self

Author(s): Michael L. Schwalbe

Source: Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 16, No. 4, Self in Crisis: Identity and the Postmodern
Condition (Winter 1993), pp. 333-350
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction
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Goffman Against
Postmodernism: Emotion
and the Reality of the Self
Goffman has been read as arguing that selves are no more
than images created in conformity with situational
expectations. I read Goffman as saying that the reality of
selfhood is not an image, but a psychobiological proces
shaped by signs and symbols. Seen in this way, the reality
of the self is evident, as Goffman suggested, not in conformity but in moments of feeling, resistance, and choice.
Drawing out what is implicit in Goffman, this article
proposes that all forms of signifying behavior, including selfpresentations, are means to sustain the coherence of the
self. For this to work, however, people must, as Goffman
pointed out, trust each other to respect the rules governing
signifying behavior and must care about the feelings
attached to selves. The article argues that the inequalities
of so-called postmodern society are undermining the trust
and care on which the interaction order and coherent
selfhood depend. Goffmans ideas about the self are used
to develop an optimistic critique of the conditions that have
produced these pernicious trends.

Michael L. Schwalbe*
North Carolina State
University

Lately Goffmans work has been identifiedwith the stream of postmodern social theory
that alleges the disappearance of the self (Dowd 1991; Gergen 1991; Langman 1992;
Tseelon 1991).Goffman is said to affirm the disappearance of the self as an enduring,
unified, autonomous entity, because in his view it is nothing but an episodically created
virtual image that cannot be sustained without an audience. On this reading of
Goffman, there is no warrant for seeking a true self beneath the images, since what
you see is all there is to get.
I agree that there are affinities, as outlined below, between Goffmans treatment of
the self and postmodernist claims regarding its demise. But as I read him, there is
Direct all correspondence to: Michael L. Schwalbe, Department of Sociology, North Carolina State
University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8107.

Symbolic Interaction, 16(4):333-350

ISSN 0195-6086

Copyright @ 1993 by JAI Press, Inc.

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Symbolic Interaction Volume 16 / Number 4 / 1993

more to the self than image in Goffman. The bedrock reality of selfhood in Goffmans
view is not the virtual image created in interaction, but the feeling, psychobiological
self from which agency flows. It is to sustain the coherent reality of such selves, Goffman
implies, that we create images of ourselves in face-to-face interaction. These images
may be tools of extraordinary power, but they are not the cause of their own creation.
I also draw upon Goffman to argue against two other postmodernist notions. One
is that the problems of contemporary selfhood are cultural in origin. I think Goffman
can help us see through this misleading notion by sensitizing us to the role inequality
plays in determining the fate of selves within the interaction order. The other notion
I oppose is that we should accept the adaptation of the self to postmodernconditions,
no matter how deplorable this might seem to those of us still wedded to certain
Enlightenment ideals. Ithink Goffman can be used to mount a critique of the conditions
of postmodernity, which are really the conditions of late capitalism, by suggesting how
these conditions have profanedthe self and damagedthe relations of trust upon which
the continued existence of the interaction order and civil society depend.

SELF, IDENTITY, AND THE INDIVIDUAL

Outside afew pockets of social psychology,there is little agreement about the meaning
of terms such as self, agent, subject, and identity. Postmodernsocial theorists
are especially notorious for playing fast and loose with these terms (Rosenau 1992,
p. 43). This makes it hard to join the conversation about the alleged disappearance
of the self, since it is not clear what theoretical language is being spoken. For the
sake of communication,if only among ourselves, 1 will try to put my conceptual cards
on the table.
I presume that every individual raised in a human community, and who is capable
of using a sign system, comes to be imbued with a self. By this, I mean that there
emerges and takes form in the individual a psychic process wherein signs and other
forms of imagery answer to biologically rooted impulses. Once this process begins,
it is self-sustaining;short of death or severe brain damage, it cannot disappear. Every
individual thus can be said to possess a self that aids survival by regulating the
expenditure of energy. As long as the individual lives, which necessarily implies
confronting and manipulatingthe material world at some level, s/he is also a subject,
that is, a potential source of agency.
People are also endowed with identities, which are usually described by social
psychologistsas meanings given to the individual as a social object. These meanings
are typically based on category membership (e.g., being male or female) or other
culturally significant pieces of biography (e.g., having been married). If we think in
pragmatist terms and understand meanings as evoked responses,then identities can
be seen as response-evoking signs. Acquiring identities is, in this view, the process
of acquiring sign values or, more simply, the process whereby a person becomes

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a complex sign. The ability to function as a sign, and thus to evoke conditioned
responses in others, is part of what gives an individual force as a social entity.
Identities are thus signs of the pragmatic value of the individual;they provide a basis
for inferring how a person is likely to function as an interactant. These signs, which
can be manifestedin speech, posture, dress, body type, and so forth, evoke responses
in others, and in the individual as s/he reflects on him or herself. In practice, this kind
of signification is enormously complex. Consider that individuals can signify in multiple
ways simultaneously (cf. Perinbanayagam 1991, pp. 5-25); that when individuals
function as signs they may elicit all manner of unintended responses; that context
influences what individuals mean as signs; and that because ambiguity is inescapable,
there is no one true meaning of an individual as a sign.
While the self cannot disappear, identities can. This happens when the signs that
give meaning to a person lose their signifying force. If dark skin no longer were taken
as signifying anything about a persons character, what many people now think of
as a sign of racial identity would be defunct, as would be the identities black and
white. Likewise, if the group from which a collective identity derives ceases to exist,
the identity may disappear with it. Thus, identities can change or disappear, or come
into being, as quickly as any kind of sign. As this happens, as people come to signify
different things, the self changes.
Of the individual in this scheme of things, we can say that each incorporates a self
which gives unique form to his or her agency. We can also say that the individual is
an agent regulated by a self. But we cannot say that individuals are selves; nor is it
correct to refer to the self as an agent, as if it were a thing apart from the individual.
Again, the self is a psychic process arising within and constituting an essential part of
the socialized individual as an organic system. As long as the individual lives, the self
cannot disappear and s/he retains the capacity for agency. However, because the self
is responsive to signs, it can be disciplined and agency, thus, narrowly channeled.
We can also say that in interaction, individuals seek to satisfy impulses by making
identity claims; that is, they make use of their sign values (or the sign values they
can wield) to evoke desired responses in others. This latter business is usually called
self-presentation. We should understand that this is not really a presentationof the
self as defined above, but a presentationof signs in a way that functions-by eliciting
useful responses from others-to preserve both the self as an organized psychic
process and the body as an organism. This can work, of course, only within a rulegoverned interaction order. Later, I say more about the relationship between the self
and the interaction order. Now, we can consider Goffmans treatment of the self and
the signifying acts that issue from it.

GOFFMANS DECENTERING MOVE

Goffmans analyses of self-presentation and impression management clearly overlap
with poststructuralist and postmodernist analyses of the selfs demise (cf. Battershill

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1990; Erickson 1991; Langman 1992). One point of overlap is evident if we think of
identity claims as self-presentational texts. A postmodernist view (informed by
poststructuralism) would suggest that such texts have no fixed meaning and that
whatever meaningthey do have is not under the control of the individualswho appear
to create them. Goffman likewise decenters the author of self-presentationaltexts, in
the sense of showing how the meaning of a self-presentation depends on matters
beyond the awareness and control of the individual.
Goffmans various analyses show that in making self-presentations, people must
often use sign-equipment not of their own choosing; that the meaning of this signequipment is not determined by the person who uses it; that the rules or codes that
allow people to employ sign-equipment meaningfully are not of their immediate
creation; that some people have limited access to certain props or other pieces of
sign-equipment; that the meaning of a prop or a piece of sign-equipment is also
determined by the context in which it is used; and that ultimately the meaning of a
self-presentation is created in collaboration with an audience.
Goffman also tells us that in each self-presentationthere is information given and
information given off; that is, people reveal things about themselves overtly,
consciously, and with measured control, but they also reveal things about themselves
in many subtle ways that can escape their control. The meaningof a self-presentation
can thus escape both the attention and intention of its author. In many ways, then,
Goffman sounds like a poststructural analyst of the semiotics of self-presentation (cf.
Gonos 1977). To understand how situated identities are created, he directs our
attention away from the individual to the social world in which the individual can
accomplish nothing without a rule book, equipment, and other players who are willing
to frame a self-presentation in a particular way.
But most often, Goffman is read as analyzing the individuals adaptation to
modernity. Goffman seems to say that in order for interaction to work in a complex,
mass society, actors cannot be rigidly committed to using any particular rule book
and equipment but must be ready to use whatever will work with the diverse audiences
they encounter. Individuals must, therefore, fragment themselves for their own good.
If this is the case, then what is more important than any essential character are the
images and codes used to fashion workable self-presentations. On this reading of
Goffman (see,e.g., Gouldner 1970; McNall and Johnson 1975; Manning 1976; Munch
1986),there is no moral center to anchor a true self; the individual appears committed
to nothing more than wearing whatever mask will pay off in a given situation.

THE REALITY OF THE SELF IN MOMENTS OF AGENCY

Does this mean that Goffman would grant the disappearance of the self as a fact of
life under conditions of late modernity or so-called postmodernity? I doubt it. In fact,
I think that Goffman can tell us where the self is at, even in these troubled times. As

Goffman Against Postmodernism

337

with the other elements of social life that Goffman points out to us, the self is right
in front of our noses, or perhaps right behind. I read Goffman as saying that the reality
of the self, as an enduring, unified, psychobiological entity, is evident in moments of
decision, of resistance, and of feeling-all of which regularly arise in face-to-face
encounters.
The moments of decision I am referring to are those where we decide what face
to present in an encounter, and what kind of repair work to do if the need for it arises.
Our choices are always limited, but still we must decide. What is more, we must decide
based on consideration of the mixed motives that we bring to most encounters
(Goffman 1959, p. 15). Satisfying these motives sometimes calls for concealing
information about ourselves, sometimes for fictionalizing ourselves a bit, and
sometimes for revealing what we believe to be our truest nature. Inasmuch as social
life is sufficiently complex to require interaction with diverse others to accomplish
diverse tasks, we must stand ready to be flexible in making identity claims and in
doing face work. The need for flexibility implies the need for decision, and in moments
of deciding what and how we wish to signify, we are real moral agents-image makers,
not merely images.
The reality of the self is also evident in moments of resistance; that is, in moments
when we take a stance and try to assert ourselves over against others who would prefer
us to act differently. Goffman is most clear about this in Asylums, where he says:
The practice of reserving something of oneself from the clutch of an institution is very
visible in mental hospitals and prisons but can be found in more benign and less
totalistic institutions, too. I want to argue that this recalcitrance is not an incidental
mechanism of defense but rather an essential constituent of the self (1961, p. 319).
Goffman referred to the enactment of this recalcitrance as making secondary
adjustments. These are ways of creating space for autonomous action within the
constraints of oppressive institutions and, thus, experiencing ones self as an agent.
Here is where the self is rooted or, as Goffman put it:
Secondary adjustments provide the inmate with important evidence that he is still his
own man, with some control over his environment; sometimes a secondary adjustment
becomes almost a kind of lodgment for the self, a churinga in which the soul is felt
to reside (1961, p. 55).
Later, he says that the self emerges out of resistance, when it takes a stance against
something. At one point (p. 320),he proposes that, for sociological purposes, we might
even want to define the individual as a stance-taking entity. His conclusion is that:
Without something to belong to, we have no stable self, and yet total commitment
and attachment to any social unit implies a kind of selflessness. Our sense of being

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a person can come from being drawn into a wider social unit; our sense of selfhood
can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull. Our status is backed by
the solid buildings of the world, while our sense of personal identity often resides in
the cracks (1961, p. 320).
The reality of the self is also evident in the emotion that grows out of it, and in the
feelings its image evokes4It is the latter point that Goffman emphasizes in his essay
on face work (Goffman 1955). He says that our most powerful feelings are attached
to images of our selves. But this does not mean that the image is the driving force;
it means that the images are signs that evoke emotional responses in the individuals
representedby them. In the terms set forth earlier, I would say that the self, as a psychic
process, is affected by signs in such a way that the effects are felt in the body (cf.
Goffman 1983, p. 3). The reality of the self is thus evident when we are affected
emotionally by the signs of selfhood that are used in an encounter.
It is these feelings that in turn give form to agency in interaction. That it is to say,
we choose a face or a line to protect these feelings. We make identity claims, do
face work, engage in role distancing, and show deference and present demeanor
in interaction because of the extraordinary strength of the feelings arising out of the
self as a psychic process. When these feelings are threatened by incidents in
interaction, we react by doing some kind of repair work. In part, this is to repair the
encounter,to ensure that a piece of joint action is completed. But this is also to restore
the self's coherence as a psychic process, for when this coherence is disrupted,
noxious bodily feelings arise. In these moments of threat, feeling, and repair, the firm
reality of the self is undeniable; there is something sacred and vital to our existence
that we strive to protect.
The need for maintaining the coherence of the self as a psychic process is so
powerful that Goffman saw the interaction order itself as arising to meet this need
(Goffman 1967, 1983). Every encounter is risky, in that disruptive signification can
occur intentionally or accidentally. The rules of the interaction order arise to minimize
the risk of damage to the coherence of the self, and thereby minimize the risk of the
bodily felt emotional pain that such damage can induce. The interaction order thus
protectsthe individual'ssanity and, by extension, his or her utility as a safe and effective
interactant. When the interaction order is disrupted, both selves and society are at
stake (cf. Rawls 1987).
Goffman clearly rejects the textual idealism of some postmodern social theorists. For
Goffman, while anything can function as a sign, and hence can be part of a text, this
is not the only way things function. Coatrooms and parking lots can function as signs
of all kinds of social facts. And, indeed, these pieces of constructed material reality can
even be decoded and stories read from them. But coatrooms and parking lots must
also function to hold the coats and cars we need to carry on with life. The interaction
order requires a material stage no less than a symbolic script, and we will do better
at analyzing social life-the story as it is being lived-if we distinguish between the two.

Goffman Against Postmodernism

339

Nor for Goffman is interaction just a matter of language games (cf. Lyotard 1984,
p. 15). Emotion, rooted in the body, is a basic and undeniable feature of social life.
Our words matter, the language games we play matter, and the ways in which we
signify ourselves matter-but not just because it is fun to make sense together. These
things matter because we, as creatures with selves, desire to avoid psychic and, by
extension, bodily pain, and because we need to cooperate in order to survive. In
recognizing these facts, Goffman appears to have a much firmer grasp of the
structuring force of material reality than do many postmodernists.
Social arrangements may demand flexibility in making identity claims, and the
making of such claims may depend on cultural images and codes borrowed from
elsewhere. Even so, the self is still with us, and Goffman will not support an argument
to the contrary. He did not equate the image with its maker. The virtual self, the
signifying image created in interaction, is not the same thing as the individual agent
who is regulated by a self. Behind the image is a relatively stable psychobiological
entity consisting of the impulses that lead us to choose one type of performance over
another,to resist demands for some kinds of performances,and to experience elation
and distress depending on the consequences of our choices (Goffman1959, pp. 253254; see also Erickson 1991).

THE CURRENT SCENE: MODERNISM AMOK

Argument persists over the claim that we are living in a postmodern era distinct from
the modern era that preceded it5 Reviewing these arguments is unnecessary to the
task at hand. To understand and extend Goffmans take on the self, emotion, and the
social order, it is more useful to examine the conditions under which the self now
exists than to worry about what those conditions are called. But to at least position
myself in the debate, I will say that I follow Jameson (1984), Harvey (1989), Agger
(1990), and Callinicos (1990) in observing that the current scene looks more like
modernism run amok by capitalism than it looks like a distinctly new era.
This is not to deny that there are trends afoot, and perhaps accelerating trends,
that make the current scene a hard place in which to maintain a coherent self. In
fact, it is my purpose to use Goffman to show just how this is so. But again, it seems
more productive to cut to a consideration of these trends, and current conditions
generally, than to argue taxonomy. So, then, here is my cataloging of the pernicious
features of modernism amok:
0

The complex, mass society we live in bureaucratizes most of our public social
relationships, which tend also to be temporary and superficial. Thus, other
than what we can create in the small spheres of our private lives, we lack
real communities in which to anchor and cultivate and crystallize our selves
through stable relationships with others about whom we truly care.

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340

Because we tend to be more mobile than ever-chasing after jobs, adventure,

and happiness-we also fail to develop identities that are meaningfully tied
to places. We are more likely to think of ourselves as from someplace, rather
than as of a place-that is, as rooted in the history and culture of a place
that we have helped shape.
Because so many of our relationships are temporary and our encounters
fleeting, we must give priority to the images of self we present, since we will
be judged-even as we judge others-in the instant the image is decoded.
There is simply no time for anything else. We are not going to be with most
people long enough to see character revealed in any deeper or more genuine
way.
Communication and transportation technologies have so compressed time
and space that we are overwhelmed by the diversity of people, situations,
and events that we must react to daily. In this flux of information, perspectives,
discourses, and performancesfor diverse audiences, we can easily lose track
of who we are or would like to be, since it seems impossible to live as just
one kind of person.
Because we are bombarded with so many contradictory points of view, all
confidentlyassertedas correct, we lose faith in the ability of the trained intellect
to sort through these competing claims and discover what is really going on.
So we mask our uncertaintywith the demeanor of world-wearinessand cease
to anguish over contradictions. Then, we cease to strive for coherence and
integrity in our own worldview and way of living, since this would seem to
be impossible anyway. We thus accept our own fragmentation and
incoherence, and the fragmentation and incoherence of others, and refuse
responsibilityfor forging any unifying visions.
It is also said that the culture industry-mostly in the forms of television, film,
and advertising-has made commodities of the images we use to fashion
our self-presentations.What is worse, we may feel trapped, compelled to use
these images because they are the lingua franca of self-presentation. We
must use them if we wish to be recognized and affirmed by the others to whom
we display ourselves in public.
It is said that becausethese commodifiedimages change so rapidly, we must,
likewise, continually make ourselves over to fit each seasons fashionable
images. In the process, our sense of having an enduring, core self that is
separate from the images we put on is lost. All that endures is our anxiety
about getting our needs for recognition and acceptance met through our skill
in presenting the right image for the moment.
Finally,it is said that we have lost faith in any moral standards or values against
which to judge ourselves, since values have been relativized and all our
heroes have been exposed as frauds. Our response is universal cynicism,

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which serves to protect us from manipulation by the powerful-who invoke

values to discipline us-and from claims upon our resources by the weakwho invoke values to shame us. If we embrace any moral standards, it is
only those that serve our own desires. In all this, we find that the moral self
has been pithed.
These are the charges against the current scene-with its modern and so-called
postmodern features mixed up together-in Western industrialized societies. If we
suppress our modernist desire for empirical proof of these charges and presume that
they are true, then even if the self has not disappeared, its condition in some quarters
must be grim indeed. Under these conditions the self has become so chameleonlike that, even if it is still there, it is hard to see, since it has been well-programmed
to blend in with its surroundings. Instead of being visible in its resistance, it is now
invisible in its complicity.

PRAGMATIC SELF-PRESENTATION
IN THE CONTEXT OF INEQUALITY
Goffman is often dubiously credited with conceiving of the individual as an actor who
manipulatesothers by managing impressions in whatever way is necessary to obtain
rewards in a given situation. This common portrayalof Goffmans view of the individual
resonates with the cynicism of some postmodern social theorists, and so it is not
surprising that he has been assigned to their camp. But this portrayal of Goffman
misinterpretsthe analytic spirit of his dramaturgy, confuses his analysis of what people
do with claims about what they are, and misses his implicit critique of inequality.
As noted earlier, Goffman sees people as engaging in a sort of semiotic bricolage
of self-presentationfor a variety of reasons-and, indeed, sometimes this might involve
deception, but it can also involve attempts to communicate authenticity, to keep
interaction on track toward a practical goal, and to protect the feelings of others. What
his dramaturgy is about, in the spirit of Kenneth Burke, is describing the dramatic
techniques that people use to communicate, to get things things done, to help others,
and to protect themselves. This view assumes two things: that social life depends
on the use of dramatic techniques to do things together, and that studying the ways
in which people use these techniques can help us understand social life. It does not
claim that people are manipulative or deceptive by nature.
Human nature, to tweak Goffmans phrase, is not a very natural thing. People
respond to and are shaped by their circumstances. So, when Goffman describes
people as strategically managing impressions, he is describing how people respond
to social arrangements. Under some conditions, which are probably familiar to us all,
we may need to conceal our true feelings to get a job done, to get along, to avoid
being punished, or to save our skins. Usually, it is when we are materially dependent

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on others that we must rely on strategic impression management. This is less a choice
to be deceptive than it is a choice to survive.
This suggests a need to look again at so-called conditions of postmodernityto see
what else is going on that undermines the creation of stable, coherent, morally
responsible selves. We will find, to use a famous architectural rather than theatrical
metaphor, that it is the material base, not the superstructure,that is, in the last analysis,
undoing the self.

POSTMODERNITY AS LATE CAPITALISM

To speak of our times as postmodern is to imply that the important thing we are past
is modernity.The term postmodernthus helps us forget that we are not past capitalism,
the structural imperatives of which continue to powerfully shape the material and
cultural life of most people on the planet (Jameson1984; Callinicos 1990; Agger 1990;
Kellner 1992). These structural imperatives-the most important of which are the
needs for continued profit and for control of labor-are what produce circumstances
and ideas that make it difficult to sustain the sacredness of the self. They also threaten
the interaction order that normally serves to buffer the self from the direct ravages
of inequality. Although Goffman did not explicitly criticize capitalist social
arrangements, he was sensitive to the potentially destructive effects that inequality
could have on the self (cf. Fine and Martin 1990; Burns 1992, pp. 54-58). Thus, his
work suggests a need to look at the power relations and economic interests that
underlie the production of symbolic culture.
Taking this view, what I see is not the digestion of the self by an insidious culture
industry. There is, of course, such an industry, but it exists only as a symbiote of
capitalism; it serves to make us tractable workers, insatiable consumers, and political
invalids-all as part of a larger project to keep capitalism alive. It does this in part
by undermining our security regarding what is enduring about ourselves. Messages
conveyed by advertising (especially),television, and films amplify our natural anxieties
and then promise relief if we buy the products that will allow us to present to others
a creditable image of ourselves. The point of all this, we should not forget, is to make
profits or to keep the world safe for making profits.
The seductiveness of the capitalist culture industry is enhanced by the
powerlessness most people experience in the sphere of production. Most people
have few opportunities in their work to express, cultivate, and be appreciated for
the full range of their capacities. Selves are thus stunted as they are disciplined
and harnessed to serve the needs of capital. As a result, people may come to feel
that, as producers, they are anything but sacred. What capital then offers is the
possibility of redemption through consumption, which becomes a form of
sacramental offering to what is left of the self. To make the scam work, the capitalist
culture industry must manipulate consciousnesssuch that people can feel powerful,

Goffman Against Postmodernism

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special, and creative even as they do nothing more than recycle their wages by
buying commodities.
Selves anchored in work are also tremendously insecure in these days of capital
mobility, public-budget shorffalls, and unorganized labor. Productive steel workers,
mid-level managers,and tenured professorscan find themselves out of work tomorrow
as factories are closed, operations downsized, and budgets cut. Further, this is not
due to any fault of their own but to decisions made by people with a great deal more
political and economic power. By controlling the material resources that sustain
institutions, the powerful can deny us the resources needed to make vital identity
claims and to experience ourselves as agents. To put it another way, they can take
away our power to do and signify important things.
Inequality also undermines the self in the political realm. Here, too, owing to their
control over greater material resources, elites will dominate most of the time, despite
organized citizen resistance. Resistance itself, which could be a source of
empowerment, is weakened by the wealth and status inequalities that discourage
participationby non-whitesand the working class, who prefer to avoid one more arena
in which to contend with racism and condescension. So, for most people,politics offers
little chance for creativity, control, or cultivating morally responsible selfhood.
With what, then, are we left? What avenues do we have to meet our needs for
recognition, acceptance, efficacy, a sense of moral worth, and individuation?We have
whatever we can create in our private lives, provided we are favorably positioned to
obtain the resources needed to create comfortable,controllable private lives. But such
positioning again depends on the public self-presentations we make to those who
control the sphere of production. So, again, we are constrained to use the images
and codes that make us readable as productive and cooperative workers. The very
possibility of temporary escape from the iron cage thus depends on our signifying
willingness to behave ourselves within it.
A contradiction arises, however,because even while its purpose is to promote mass
consumption, the capitalist culture industry glorifies individuality. Peoples needs for
affirmation of their individuality are thus aroused but then run smack into the realities
of their powerlessness in the spheres of production and politics. A form of resistance
arises out of this contradiction, but it is limited to the sphere of consumption, where
it takes the form of narcissistic self-display. For the most part, what people are left
with as a means to command public recognition and to have an effect on others is
fashion.
A further contradiction arises because the means to signify in the realm of
consumption must, by definition, be purchased. Hence, those with the most wealth
can signify most powerfully in this domain as well, while those with the greatest need
to do so are least able. One way that members of oppressed groups react to this
bind is by creating alternative codes of signification that do not depend on the
resources controlled by economic elites. Another reaction is to engage in disruptive

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signification,that is, to signify contempt for the selves, faces, and values of dominant
groups, as well as for the social order they impose. Elites, too, engage in disruptive
signification,but they do it through conspicuous consumption, which encodes an insult
to those unable to consume at the same level.
The danger is that when denied the chance to create, people may try to experience
agency by destroying.In a capitalist society, property is sacred and makes a satisfying
target. But the selves of others, being sacred as well, can also make satisfyingtargets.
Thus, for example, signs of the capacity for violence may be used to command
attention by evoking fear in others. So, too, might signs of the readiness to shatter
others faces. The subtext in both cases is, Dont you dare overlook me. I will not
be rendered invisible. When people feel compelled to signify in this way, the rules
of the interaction order are transformed from means to protect selves into means to
hurt them.

RESISTING THE DEGRADATION OF THE SELF

The capitalist culture industry profanes the self by using the ritual idiom of individuality
to foster insecurity and undermine respect for the selves of others. Unlike an overtly
coercive total institution, this industry does not take our identity kits away; rather, it
fills them with shlock and kitsch. It thus tries to inflate us even as it impoverishes us
by homogenizing what we can say and feel about ourselves. It further profanes the
self by denying the reality of the chronic feelings of emptiness that come from staking
our worth on commodified images. When we are told that these feelings can be
resolved by a makeover, by adopting a fresh image, we are hearing a lie that denies
both the reality and sacredness of the self.
Goffmans analyses should alert us to the importance of the trust on which the
maintenance of the self as a sacred object depends. Intensifyingeconomic competition
and increasing deprivation undermine this trust; desperate people who feel out of
control are unlikely to trust their faces to others, or to show much respect for others
faces. Under these conditions, we begin to see others as threats to our faces and,
hence, as dangerous objects from which we must shield ourselves with images. When
we begin to presume that this defensive posture is universal, we become ever fearful
of being played for fools. Thus, in the public realm, we trust as little as possible, reveal
as little as possible, lest we make ourselves vulnerable. The quality of community
life is vastly diminished by this not unreasonablefear of risking our faces and selves
in public discourse.
But again, this is not some mysterious breakdown of civility; these are the ripple
effects of vast material inequalities.The possibility of civil public discourse, let alone
the possibility of an ideal speech situation, is undermined when large numbers of
people feel powerless, disrespected, and able to affect others only by disruptive
signification. This suggests more than a breakdown of civility. What it suggests is a

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withdrawal of commitment to the interaction order as a means to protect selves. The

rules of the interaction order are still necessary to get things done, and most will not
use the rules to cause harm. Yet, it takes only a few violations to severely damage
the trust on which commitment to the interaction order depends.
The modernist idea of an autonomous, fully self-aware individual who forges
relations with others based on rational calculations of utility is part of the problem.6
It is not the self but this idea of the self that ought to disappear. It is an idea that obscures
the origins of the self in emotional ties to others; obscures the dependence of the
self's coherence on the virtual images that are created jointly with others; obscures
the importance of feelings rooted in the body as the grounds for our connections to
others; pretends we can know ourselves fully without being in communion with others;
and obscures the origins of reason in emotion. The modernist myth of the self is, thus,
not only false but oppressive, because it denies the emotional reality of the self and
the full scope of our connections to others.
This conception of the self is kept alive-despite the opposition of pragmatist
philosophy, feminism, psychoanalysis, symbolic interactionism, and so forthbecause of its value for maintaining inequality. It is not only an idea about the self;
it is also a way to discipline the self. In a society where we must maintain the illusions
that exploitation is fair exchange, that predation is competition, and that profit is the
measure of rationality, it is necessary to undermine trust in feelings as a source of
knowledge about what is right and good. Otherwise, our feelings might tell us, and
we might begin to believe, that there is something wrong going on. The idea of an
autonomous, rational self that does not let feelings interfere with deciding the most
efficient way to get a job done or which rule to apply, is ideological grease for the
gears of a capitalist economy (cf. Hochschild 1983, pp. 186-198).
The modernist myth of the self thus divides us internally because it deniesthe worth,
and sometimes the very reality, of the feelings arising out of the self. It also divides
us from each other because it denies the worth of feelings as a source of knowledge
about our moral obligations to others. This is what some critics of modernity and of
postmodernity (echoing earlier critics of modernity) have been urging us to see. To
symbolic interactionists, this might seem like old stuff. After all, have not such ideas
about the self been part of our tradition for a long time?
Indeed, they have. Mead and Dewey both debunked the modernist myth of an
autonomous, purely rational self. But for a long time, sociology lost sight of the
importance of the emotional reality of the self (some are still in the dark see, e.g.,
Coleman 1993). To presume that humans act based on rationally calculated selfinterest, as if this were unambiguously determinable, simply presumes away much
of the complexity and mystery of the self. This is perhaps why Goffman has been
interpreted as conceiving of the individual as a schemer. Reading him through the
ideological lenses of modernity, this is what might be seen.

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PAEAN TO THE UNRULY AND SACRED SELF

Focusing on the emotional reality of the self reminds us that, in essence, we are all
cauldrons of conflicting impulsesto act, which we must learn to use signs and symbols
to manage. When we succeed at this, or when others think we have, we call our
behavior, in retrospect, rational. This is not to deny the possibility of intelligently
evaluating the means and ends of an act, either before or after the act occurs. Of
course not. It is to deny that the self can be understood as nothing more than the
well-ordered texts, the coherent images, the polished self-presentations that are its
points of articulationwith the external world. Behindthe texts and images is a dynamic,
sometimes chaotic bioenergetic process. This process is regulated in part through
humanly created signs. But that is not all it is. It is both text and antitext.
Many symbolic interactionists have failed to appreciate just how radical the
interactionist view of the self can be, if pushed beyond the bounds of polite social
~cience.~
This may be one reason why postmodernist writers have stolen our thunder
of late. They have done more with ideas out of our tradition-in the sense of generating
theoretical flash-than we have. There are, however, things we can do that those who
have succumbed to textual idealism are unlikely to do. For one thing, we can go find
out how it is that different groups of people experience and cope with the material
and cultural conditions of contemporary life (cf. Featherstone 1988). We might also
want to try to find out just what these conditions are before we are swept up in much
more armchair theorizing.
For another thing, we can try to find out how it is that different groups of people
make and use signs and texts to do things with, for, and to others. As Farberman
(1991) recommended, in the interests of justice we might want to pay special attention
to how elites maintainthe power shields-the dramaturgicalfronts-upon which their
control in part depends. How exactly is it, to use Goffmans metaphors, that the con
is pulled off and snorers are wooed to sleep? These matters call for direct study as
well as for the wildest theorizing.
This does not mean a reversion to philosophically naive, unreflexive, realist
ethnography. Here, again, we have a philosophicaltradition to draw on that can make
us smarter than that (see Antonio 1991; Richardson 1991). Dewey and Mead argued
that all knowledge is perspectival. This is a key piece of what is today fashionably
called standpoint epistemology. Old-fashioned pragmatist epistemology reminds us
that there is, indeed, an obdurate, material world out there-a world which includes
other people-that will resist action based on theorizing that is too wild; thus, not all
theories are equally useful. But all theories are created by people who are products
of particular times and places, and so all theories depend on the signs and symbols
people have available to create meanings. With this in mind, and knowing too that
our unruly selves generate the novel experiences about which we feel compelled to
theorize, we can abandon the illusion that it is possible for us to discover and tell the
one true story about how the world works.

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347

We should not dismiss postmodernist warnings against totalizing metanarratives.

Just as there is more than one experience of social reality, so also there is more than
one useful story to be told about it. Moreoever,as Marxists and other critical theorists
have argued, all stories told about the world-all theories about how it works-grow
out of and serve particular values and interests. We cannot escape this. Yet, this does
not mean we are stuck with the solipsistic conclusion, which some postmodern social
theory leads to, that since all we can do is tell our stories about the world, we might
just as well tell whatever stories are most aesthetically pleasing. There are different
kinds of stories we can tell, and if we are purportingto tell about how particular groups
of people think, feel, and do things together, then the responsible thing to do is to
go have a careful look.
Many sociologists are bothered by postmodernism because it refuses to privilege
story telling that is based on having looked carefully. Even more troubling to them
is the claim by sociologists who are enamored of postmodernism that their poetry,
fiction, autobiography, and literarylfilm criticism are as valuable as analytic accounts
of social life as anything else sociologists might write. This seems to imply abandoning
the empiricism on which sociology has staked its claims to being a discourse worth
heeding. But perhaps we would be heeded more if we did not write so coldly and
distantly about what is most real to us all-emotions, the body, sexuality, the self. In
the context of US. sociology, the choice to write about these matters in other than
the bloodless, soulless, conventional way is a recalcitrant one. Postmodernism itself,
as a kind of secondary adjustment, can thus perhaps be taken as a further sign that
the emotional reality of the self cannot be denied.
Despite the seeming array of happy choices available to us--50 brands of sugarcoated cereal and 27 subfields of sociology-the self and the interaction order are
still threatened by the dynamics of late capitalism. Goffman helps bring this bleak
situation to light. But I will not conclude in chorus with the cynical postmodernists.
I find in Goffman more reason for hope than despair. I take heart in his conception
of a deciding, resisting,feeling self-one that is sacred and that depends for its survival
on relations of trust with others. I take heart, too, in his conception of the self as sacred
and worthy of dignified treatment because of its inherent emotional reality. Seeing the
self in these ways, I see also reason to hope that resistance to commodified culture
and to ersatz selfhood will never be squelched. Post postmodernity, I hope we will
retain the desire for, and the capacity to create, communities that cultivate all manner
of sacred selves, diverse yet responsibly connected.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Thanks to Peter Callero, Rebecca Erickson,Viktor Gecas, Sherry1Kleinman,Joshua Mann,
and Cliff Staples for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Thanks also to Bob Antonio,
Dmitri Shalin, and Mark Gottdiener for general encouragement.

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348

NOTES
1. This conception of the self as a process of imagery answeringto impulses might sound
a bit strange, but it is really just Mead in other words. See Schwalbe (1991) for an
elaboration.
2. The self is part of a dynamic process that includes the body. Its function is to modulate
the expressionof impulses in the interest of survival. While the self as a psychic process
is never static and always evolving, it must be relatively stable over short periods of
time in order to keep the individual acting effectively. Sufficiently intense emotional
harm may threaten the selfs stability, hence also individual survival. The interaction
order might, thus, be seen as an outgrowth of the selfs needs to maintain its own
stability by minimizing the risk of disturbance that cannot be damped (see Schwalbe
1991).
3. Three dictionaries failed me before I found churinga. It turns out, according to the
third edition of Websters New World Dictionary, that a churinga is an object (made
of wood or stone) believed by members of some central Australian aboriginal tribes
to represent the spiritual double of a living person or to embody the spirit of a totemic
ancestor. The churinga is considered sacred and is generally kept secret.
4. It might be said that the image of ones self in consciousness answers to some of
our most powerful impulses. Or perhaps it is the case that the image of ones self
in consciousness answers to more (conflicting?)impulses at once than any other, thus
the tremendously strong feelings associated with it.
5. For general discussions regarding the nature of modernism, modernity,
postmodernism, postmodernity, postmodern social theory, and so forth, see
Featherstone (1988), Best and Kellner (1991), Smart (1993), Agger (1991), Rosenau
(1992), and B. Turner (1990).
6. This is not only a modernist conception of the self but also a distinctly masculinist
one (Schwalbe 1992). It is the rational, autonomous, emotionally controlled, honorbound self associated with hegemonic masculinity that is the implicit ideal of much
modernist philosophy and social theory. For an illustrativeanalysis of how these ideas
are represented in the work of Max Weber, see Bologh (1990).
7. Some notable exceptions are those who have merged dramaturgical analysis with
Marxist or other critical perspectives (e.g., Young 1990; Welsh 1990; Langman 1992).

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