From Erving to Goffman : A Work in Performance?

Abstract

Erving Goffman was among the most prominent sociologists of the twentieth century. An unmatched observer of everyday human interaction, he has only grown in influence in the 45 years since his untimely 1980 death. We know surprisingly little about his life. Yves Winkin’s biography, translated from the French (D’Erving à Goffman: Une œuvre performée?, 2022, MkF éditions), is an elegantly written and deeply informed account of the sociologist’s life, by one of the world’s leading Goffman scholars. From Erving to Goffman reads Goffman’s life through his performances on stage, at the lectern, before an audience. Winkin treats the lecture—Goffman’s own conference talks, his writings on the lecture form, and even a lecture on the lecture—as a reflexive device to draw out how the Canadian-born Erving became Goffman the American sociologist. We learn how Goffman, the quintessential observer of performance in everyday life, performed himself into professional existence. In talk after talk, he managed the impressions he gave off with often-eccentric care. From Erving to Goffman is a biography in miniature, with an account of the scholar’s life joined to a collection of conference-vignettes from his visits around the world. It is a story of a sociologist made in performance, with photographers banned and appearances—on and off-stage—orchestrated. It is fitting that, in a book about self-exemplifying self-making, Winkin concludes with an eloquent account of his own decades-long project to write a full biography, still retracing Goffman’s steps forty years on. From Erving to Goffman, the latest installment in the Goffman in the Open series, is an unusually perceptive portrait-in-fragments of the sociologist who became Goffman.