----- Original Message ----- From: "Miles Jackson" <cqmv at pdx.edu>
Goffman's point is a bit more radical: what we feel and every "transformative" social interaction we have is a ritualized social role too (trust and courage are socially defined and expressed!). That doesn't make those intimate interactions any less important to us; it's just that there isn't some core, essential part of us that floats freely and independently above the hustle and bustle of social relations. (--and back we go to the sixth thesis on Feuerbach.)
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I don't agree. I've grown up across three different cultures: Romania, France, U.S., so I have some notiong of what socially defined means.
But to say that everything is socially defined therefore is perforce ritualized, with no possiblity of transcendence (if you will), seems to me a mere playing with words and counter to actualy experience.
I'm not saying there's some core, essential part of us that floats freely above social relations. Everything is defined/experienced in relation. But this is not to say that there are no differences among these relations and how we come to understand ourselves.
Joanna