La vida consagrada y su relación con la constitución de la Iglesia

Although niggling doubts persisted around the capacity of Goffman’s dramaturgical framing to take account of the emotionality of the women’s stories, my main interest at that time lay in locating an analytic framework I could use to scaffold the day-to-day embodied interactions contained within participant’s accounts. Despite my misgivings around emotionality, his work seemed well suited to many aspects of this task and I began to explore more carefully his ideas around stigma, embarrassment and the presentation of self (Goffman, 1959, 1961, 1963). Within the sociological canon, Goffman is one of the few thinkers to explore the everyday social practices of emotion, particularly the self-conscious emotions of shame and embarrassment. Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), Stigma (1963) and Asylums (1961) provide us with minutely detailed accounts of the myriad interactional strategies employed by individuals to

manage shame in their lives - and the implications of these for the actor's sense of self. These publications, especially Stigma and Asylums include interpretations of human behavior that may be potentially useful in deepening our understandings of the actions of women living through abuse.

The Self

Goffman begins with a social constructionist view of the human self, presenting this as not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature and die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented… (1959/1990, p.45).

Goffman’s belief in the self’s constitution within social interaction – as intersubjectively formed - is clearly evident in his insistence that the self is a product of a successful performance. At the same time he is careful to note that this self is not something

possessed by the individual but rather is something imputed to them by witnesses on the basis of their interpretation of the actions performed by that individual. He argues that the self is something that can be seen as residing in the institutionalized social systems and structures prevailing at any particular point in time and is thus best seen as constituting, rather than supporting the self (Goffman, 1959/1990).

From this starting point Goffman builds a theory of the construction and management of the self which he terms dramaturgy. Within the dramaturgical model of social life, individuals go about their lives actively managing the self presented to others in the course of day-to-day social interaction. Carrying the dramaturgical metaphor further, Goffman presents a framework of front stage and back stage areas of life within which individuals perform. This framework comes complete with audiences, team players, and a range of concepts designed to explain how social encounters are structured – and what happens when these don’t ‘come off’ (Goffman, 1959/1990). Goffman’s attention to the strenuous efforts required by people to cope with the consequences of performances ‘gone wrong’ and his mention of patterned social controls hint at the significance of social power relationships within his argument. This point though - the way in which everyday, self-constituting ‘dramas’ are so thoroughly and unavoidably enmeshed within these relationships of power – requires far more emphasis than Goffman gives them, especially if being utilized in the context of a feminist project concerned with gendered subordination. These social power relations constrain and/or enable how, when, where, and with whom, these dramas can be performed, making it vitally important to highlight the immense influence they exert in the construction (and control) of various human subjectivities.

Goffman does not therefore present a notion of human subjectivity as entirely

mechanically and effortlessly achieved, building a case for a sense of self that is both contingent on recognition by others and not achieved without emotional exertion, and at times, cost. He is also clear to note that the choices individuals make in constituting their selves are not endlessly pliable, but are dependant upon various factors, both social and material (Goffman, 1959/1990). It was the explicit recognition of the embodied material

practices attached to the emotional aspects of the construction of self that most interested me in relation to this specific project. Much of his work, but particularly Presentation of self and Stigma, are primarily concerned with the practice or ‘doing’ of self-conscious emotions such as embarrassment and shame within everyday social interactions. This ‘doing’ is presented by Goffman within a framework of stigma management (Goffman, 1963/1990).

Stigma

Stigma, published several years after Presentation of self, is by and large an extended case study of the everyday practices involved in the management of shame and embarrassment. Bringing together his earlier conceptual framework concerning the construction and presentation of self with the notion of stigma, Goffman conducts a micro-level analysis of human interaction. In this instance however, he narrows his inquiry by focusing on the effects of stigma and the possession of stigmatized identities. With a painstakingly fine grained examination of instances of interaction Goffman draws attention to the connection between shame and stigma, highlighting the potential for shame to arise, indeed, the way in which it underpins virtually all social activity in one way or another. This work is aimed at detailing the myriad strategies employed by individuals to either stave off the occurrence of shame or manage its consequences (Goffman 1963/1990).

As defined by Goffman, in the first instance stigma is attached through attribution to an individual of some characteristic that is, or at least can be, seen as deeply discrediting to their social identity - their sense of self in relation to those with whom they interact. Developing this central concept, he suggests there are three distinct forms of stigma (attachment). Firstly, bodily stigma, as in that which is attached to those individuals suffering some forms of physical deformity. The second consists of character defects or blemishes - those aspects of an individual's character that could be "perceived as weak will, domineering or unnatural passions, treacherous and rigid beliefs, and dishonesty"

(Goffman, 1963/1990, p.14). The final category is made up of those in possession of tribal stigmas conferred by virtue of race, religion or country of origin.

The second aspect of stigma is the way in which stigmatized individuals are contrasted with 'normals', or unstigmatised individuals. This process leads 'normals', as a group, into construction of stereotypes based on perceived (generally negative) characteristics held by the stigmatized group. In fact, Goffman argues,

[w]e construct a stigma theory, an ideology to explain his (sic) inferiority…we tend to impute a wide range of imperfections on the basis of the original one… (1963/1990, pp.15-16).

His point here is that there is nothing inherently stigmatic about whatever the attributes are that come to be seen as stigmatized, or the characteristics attached to them. In short, stigma cannot be seen as anything other than socially/culturally constructed.

However, socially constructed or not, those attributed with stigmatized characteristics experience their stigma as real, with real consequences in their everyday lives. Thus they may come to identify with and accept, even if not entirely willingly or wholeheartedly, the 'normal' viewpoint. Socialization, according to Goffman, accounts for thisprocess. As he explains,

…the standards [the individual] has incorporated from the wider society equip him (sic) to be intimately alive to what others see as his (sic) failing, inevitably causing him (sic), if only for moments, to agree that he (sic) does indeed fall short of what he (sic) really ought to be" (1963/1990, p.18).

It is when the individual becomes aware that they possess such an attribute, or that others could, even if only potentially, identify them as doing so, that Goffman says shame is likely to arise - indeed becomes almost unavoidable. Goffman's project then becomes one

of identifying how the individual copes with their stigmatized or spoiled identity and the sense of shame this generates.