Remembering Erving Goffman

Elizabeth Bott Spillius



This letter is part of an email exchange between Dmitri Shalin and Elizabeth Bott Spillius that took place between March 7, 2010, and October 9, 2011, where Elizabeth recollects her life story and friendship with Erving Goffman. The following excerpt makes a subtle connection between Erving's life and work, which might be of interest to Goffman scholars. 

Thursday 1st April, 2010.
Bott Spillius to Shalin:

Through thinking so much about Erving (and also myself and my family of course) I think I have been able to clarify for myself something that led to – I was going to say 'discord' between Erving and me.  But that word isn't right because the feeling that slightly put me off Erving wasn't formulated enough to lead to discord.
Erving believed most fervently in the ultimate coercive force of 'Society' and its control over individuals.  He thought it was the height of vanity and self-deception for anyone, including himself, to believe that he had a mind of his own.  Hence his delight in showing people the falseness of their belief that their literary taste or their choice of stylish kitchen equipment was their own idea.  Everyone, including himself, was deluding themselves into thinking they were free when in fact they were slaves.  I think he thought, though I don't remember his saying so, that the coercive force of Society was comparable to Freud's belief that the unconscious mind of the individual determined the individual's thoughts and beliefs. 

I think Erving felt a certain moral superiority because he had divined this truth about Society being the ultimate social controller, and in a more intense and complete way than other sociologists had thought.  It was this moral superiority that I didn't like.  I shared Erving's view about the coercive power of Society, but not his belief that he was morally superior because of having discovered the intense truth of it and describing it so convincingly.  

Erving didn't believe that Society could be made better.  He wasn't a Communist or even a socialist, those being the ways out of slavery for many people of our generation in the 1940s.  Like Erving, I too believed in the coercive power of Society, and I didn't think that socialism would necessarily be a successful way out.  But I did feel, even in the 1940s, that one should be a bit more compassionate not only to individuals but also to Society.  Erving's attitude made me uncomfortable.  I couldn't outargue him, but I did think that there was something wrong with his moral superiority.  It came into everything. 

I think it probable that although Erving's convictions remained the same, his moral superiority diminished.  I don't know why, of course, but it seems likely that the change came about through time, ageing, and perhaps particularly through the intense suffering he must have gone through over Schuyler's mental state and her suicide.  In retrospect the 'mature' Erving seems to me to have become kinder, more forgiving, more sensitive to the feelings of others and perhaps to Society and to himself. 

The Erving who so kindly told my young daughter that she was worse than her mother was not quite the same Erving as the one who used to delight in showing semi-strangers that their choice of books was determined by social forces, while he, on the contrary, was tacitly showing that he was freer of such social conformity because he was able to break a social code by the very act of pointing this out to them.   

I think that's it, Dmitri.        

* The Erving Goffman Archives (EGA) is the web-based, open-source project that serves as a clearing house for those interested in the dramaturgical tradition in sociology and biographical methods of research.  The EGA is located in the Intercyberlibrary of the UNLV Center of Democratic Culture, http://www.unlv.edu/centers/cdclv/archives/interactionism/index.html.  Postings on the website are divided into several overlapping sections: “Documents and Papers,” “Goffman's Publications,” “Goffman in the News,” “Biographical Materials,” “Critical Assessments,” and “Comments and Dialogues.”  For inquiries regarding the EGA projects, please contact Dr. Dmitri Shalin, shalin@unlv.nevada.edu.  When you cite the materials collected for the EGA, please use the following reference:  Bios Sociologicus: The Erving Goffman Archives, ed. by Dmitri N. Shalin (UNLV: CDC Publications, 2009).