Remembering Erving Goffman
Jay Ruby
Dr. Jay Ruby, professor emeritus at Temple University, shared this memoir with Sherri Cavan and approved posting the present version in the Erving Goffman Archives.
[Posted 10-23-15]
I cannot possibly do this in any sort of chronological order, so here it goes.
I remember meeting Erving at the faculty pool at UC Berkeley during the summer of 1967. I was still at UC Davis but going to begin work at Temple in September. I believe it was Bennett Berger who came up to me at the pool and said “Erving Goffman wants to meet you.” And so I did. The only thing I can remember from this encounter is that Erving told me he wanted to meet me because I was also moving to Philadelphia and he thought I would become famous – a strange first meeting but one that indicated who and what Erving was.
He quickly became involved with others at Penn who were doing work that interested him – Dell Hymes, Sol Worth and Ray Birdwhistell. When Sol Worth was editor of Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication, Erving asked him to publish Gender Advertisements. Sol and Erving argued about Erving’s methodology and much to Erving’s annoyance, Sol wrote an introduction to the book that was critical (the introduction can be found in the 2013 ebook edited by Larry Gross and I, http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Worth-Larry-Gross-ebook/dp/B00H9T7MZG). Some years later when Sol Worth was deceased and Gross and I were co-editors of Studies in Visual Communication, the successor to Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication, someone from Harper & Row got in touch with me as they were planning to publish Gender Advertisements minus, of course, Sol Worth’s introduction. They wished to obtain permission to publish the book and to use the many photographs Erving included. Neither Erving nor Sol ever bothered to obtain permissions to use the images. Our feeling was that Studies was a tiny scholarly publication with a circulation of less than 1000. So it was extremely unlikely that the owners of these photographs would ever see the publications. So when Harper & Row asked, I graciously gave my permission. Never heard another word about it.
Erving was convinced that in order to do his research on everyday life he must remain invisible so he tried to avoid being photographed or recognized in public – much like the anthropologist Carlos Castanada. If you Google “Image Erving Goffman” you get one picture of him in his office.
Once when he and I were attending a lecture by art historian, Leo Steinberg, at Penn’s Annenberg School, a network news crew barged in the room and without asking permission started filming. Erving jumped up and stood next to the soundperson whispering sotto voce, a never-ending stream of obscenities. Soon the crew stopped filming as they could not use this footage with Erving’s diatribe – Brilliant!
Erving attended many of the Conferences on Visual Anthropology I organized at Temple (1968-1980) as part of the audience and sometimes as a panelist. Here are two examples:
1971. The Anthropological Relevance of Fiction Film. A Screening of Ramparts of Clay by Jean-Louis Bertuccelli with a discussion by Erving Goffman (University of Pennsylvania, June Nash ( CUNY, Graduate Center) and Denise O’Brien (Temple).
1972. A Critical Approach to the Use of Videotape for Social Science Research: Frankenstein Meets His Monster organized by Erving Goffman with Kaye Miller and Jerry Swatez (University of Illinois, Chicago Circle)
At least once during each discussion, Erving said something provocative and perhaps even outrageous. I was standing in the back then someone very agitated would come up to me and ask in a highly stressed manner – “WHO THE HELL IS THAT?” When I answered, Erving Goffman, the distressed person did a classic double-take and said “THAT IS ERVING GOFFMAN?” I assume the response was amazement that the famous Erving Goffman was in the audience and in addition that this famous person said such outrageous things. I believe I told Erving and he was delighted by the response.
And then there was his “costume” or disguise – an old disheveled and dirty raincoat/trench coat, an umbrella and a see-through plastic shopping bag with flowers painted on it for his brief case. Certainly a world famous sociologist like Erving Goffman would never dress like that. Probably worked well for him.
While I never heard Erving say it, several people told me that they heard him disparage the suicide of his first wife by saying “Nobody jumps off the Richardson Bay Bridge [Richmond-San Rafael Bridge].”
Erving was fond of throwing “social hand grenades.” I will give you two examples:
A group of us, including Erving, decided to go to the Bandbox – a long gone Germantown art house to see Shoah – a very long and draining film about the Holocaust. I sat next to Erving who proceeded to ask me technical questions about the film in a sotto voce clearly heard by others. When not asking these questions, he would tell others to be quiet. By the end of the film, most people had moved as far away as possible for us.
His contract with Penn did not require Erving to teach, so when he decided to offer a seminar, many students tried to get in. I was told by my wife who was hoping to audit his class that at the first session, it was standing room only. When he came in, Erving said that there were far too many people. He could not hold a seminar with a crowd. He then said everyone who did not have a 4.0 grade average had to leave. And so many starting leaving. Toward the end of their departure, he said, “Why did they go? I did not have the authority to make them do that.”
My last meeting with Erving was in late 1979, I had submitted a huge NEH research proposal. Erving was one of the reviewers. He invited me to lunch in his house and proceeded to give me the best critique I ever had of my work.