The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 104 of 254
Social life involves performance
Goffman appears to be either agnostic about, or indifferent to, the question of the reality of different selves. His interest was not essentially ontological, that is to say, concerned with the nature of being. It was primarily sociological, concerned with the nature of social interaction. His insight is neither that the roles we play conceal our real selves nor that the roles we play are our whole selves, but that whatever we are, our interactions with others involve elements of performance that can be understood through a dramaturgical model.