en

Jia Tolentino

Books

Quotes

Nadja Bogdanovahas quoted2 years ago
In 1959, the sociologist Erving Goffman laid out a theory of identity that revolved around playacting. In every human interaction, he wrote in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, a person must put on a sort of performance, create an impression for an audience.
Nadja Bogdanovahas quoted2 years ago
To communicate an identity requires some degree of self-delusion. A performer, in order to be convincing, must conceal “the discreditable facts that he has had to learn about the performance; in everyday terms, there will be things he knows, or has known, that he will not be able to tell himself.”
Nadja Bogdanovahas quoted2 years ago
o audience has to be physically present for a performer to engage in this sort of selective concealment: a woman, home alone for the weekend, might scrub the baseboards and watch nature documentaries even though she’d rather trash the place, buy an eight ball, and have a Craigslist orgy. People often make faces, in private, in front of bathroom mirrors, to convince themselves of their own attractiveness. The “lively belief that an unseen audience is present,” Goffman writes, can have a significant effect.
fb2epub
Drag & drop your files (not more than 5 at once)