The Subject is Performance: Goffman as Dramaturgical Prophet

Abstract

In Milan Kundera’s intriguing 1995 novel Slowness, the protoganist Berck, a French public intellectual, finds himself in a challenging situation when his rival, the Depute Duberques, kisses an HIV-positive person on the mouth before television cameras at a social event. Kundera describes Berck’s dilemma, explaining his three-fold concern regarding being perceived as a mere imitator of Duberques, risking possible infection, and being regarded as cowardly. Kundera writes:

So he settled for staying put and smiling inanely. But those few seconds of hesitation cost him dearly, because the camera was there and, on the nightly news, the whole of France read on his face the three phases of his uncertainty and snickered. (pp. 15–16)

In an instant, Berck faces a remarkably complex set of calculations to determine the correct strategy for performing an appropriate humanity and fails miserably; later, in a characteristically cynical Kunderian irony, he bests Duberques via a photograph with a ‘little dying black girl whose face was covered with flies.’