Erving Goffman
Saw everyday life as a performance with a backstage.
Sociologist who showed that we are always managing an impression — and that the self is less a possession than a performance others help us sustain.
techniques
We are all just actors trying to control and manage our public image.
Who they were
Erving Goffman watched ordinary behaviour the way a critic watches a play. In front of others we work a front stage, dressing and speaking to sustain a particular impression; backstage — the kitchen behind the restaurant, the car after the party — we drop it and repair. He argued the self isn't a thing you carry inside so much as an effect produced by these performances, and one that depends on others tactfully playing along. He then turned to the places where that cooperation fails: the experience of stigma, of carrying an attribute that spoils an identity, and of total institutions like asylums and prisons that strip a person of the props they used to be someone with.
Famous books
What they left on the shelf
Terms they cared about
Ideas worth knowing
Their techniques
How the work was done
Their big idea
Dramaturgical Analysis
Erving Goffman read social life as theatre. We work a front stage for others and retreat backstage to drop the act; the self is an effect of these performances rather than a thing behind them — which is why stigma and total institutions wound so deeply.
Questions in their spirit
What they’d ask you
Sit with one. Answer online, or in the app.
Carry the idea forward
Goffman — What they’d ask you
Psipas asks you one small, honest question at a time — and builds the picture from your answers.