Am I Acting?

After reading Goffman's the Presentation of Self in Everyday Life I really started to think about how I act in my everyday life. Am I always acting, or are there times where I am completely natural to my inner self. I think about most social situations I am put in. When I am at work I am a "sales person" do I really care about helping people find an outfit, no not really but I act enthusiastic and happy when really I am thinking how long until my next break. At university I sit and listen to others opinions and politely nod and smile when sometimes I just want to tell them how wrong they are. When I am with certain friends I have to refrain from saying certain things or behaving in a certain way. When I am with my grandparents I try my best to refrain from using profanities. After this succession of thoughts I thought how exhausting. I am without realizing it constantly acting, I am always in a certain role. Fulfilling the characteristics of whatever I am doing. I am a daughter, a friend, a student, an employee and so on, I embody all aspects and I am expected to do so. For my life to maintain an ordinary structure I must act appropriate depending on what context I am in.

Week 5

My presentation was this week so I had an intense analysis of Evring Goffman's The Nature of Deference and Demeanour  in Interaction  Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. I thought I had a pretty good understanding of what is self until our presentation was over and Andy began asking questions. All of a sudden all of these things popped into my head like an epiphany of information. Why didn't I think of that when I was doing my presentation!? What about people who are not developed in our what is considered normal society, how are they defined as a "self". I still think that people are created within the context of what they are naturally born into. My perception of self is of course going to be completely different to an African woman living in civil war torn Sudan. Goffman explains that we communicate ourselves through our social status and rules. He develops our sense of self depending on what particular content or discourse we are in. For example being over weight would make me feel like a bad unhealthy person in my social realm, however in poverty stricken area where food is scare being over weight might make someone identify with feelings of fortune. I am fortune to have something to eat, whereas I feel guilty for over indulging. It is a conundrum to completely understand what a sense of self is. If we strip away everything around us, if we are simply and naked body in nothingness what do we become, who are we without our society or culture telling us what we are, how to act and how to simply be. Do we have a self, if we have nothing else?