A few weeks ago I assigned a piece of reading to my freshmen writing seminar students. The article explored the idea of two kinds of people, those who are "authentic" and those who are "performative." Essentially the author made a case that most college professors today grew up in the 60s and 70s where the idea of an authentic self was drilled into them. This is apparently why there seem to be so many professors on college campuses who walk around with ill-fitting clothes, scraggly hair on both head and face and scuffed up shoes that need to be at least shined or at best replaced. Something about those years made youth want to forget that others lived in the world around them and just "be who they be."
Well, you can guess what self I am. Right.... I am that other kind of self. The one that grew up in the 80s and 90s and is concerned about how the world understands me. I am a performative self. This means, according to this author's definition, that I am goal oriented in my behavior. I care more about achieving community acceptance than I care about being who I am "authentically."
So let's just say that I am authentically performative. I perform social adeptness because I don't want people to grimace when they see me coming down the hall for fear that I might be muttering incoherently about soup or buttons. I shower and groom each day so that when I talk to people in the cafeteria, hair isn't flying out in all directions and getting into the salad bar. I won't be taking an incomprehensible vocal stand on the migratory patterns of the earthworm and how paved pathways disturb their REM cycles. The more I think about this concept of the "performative" vs. the "authentic" self the more I get worked up about it.
At one point during this reading exercise with my freshmen I asked them if they thought that I was a performative self or an authentic self. It was unanimous; to them I am an "authentic self." But I doubt that their notion of authentic is the same as mine. Mine is, "crazy person with no social skills." Theirs is, "a person in our sphere of existence who isn't cripplingly shy or self-conscious about how they are appearing to the other 12 people in this room." So I guess I'll take it. What I can't help giggling about is how I seemed to have fooled them into thinking I am "authentic" when really it was all a kind of show. A show that every good teacher puts on for their students.
We pretend to be happy to be in class at 8 AM. (Authentic Heather isn't any more happy to be in class at 8 AM than they are; in fact, is less so.) We pretend to love to give and grade homework. (Authentic Heather loathes grading homework.) We pretend to know everything there is about majors, minors and the right Gen Ed classes. (Authentic Heather knows that none of those tiny decisions really matter in the grand scheme of life.) We pretend that reading our textbook is more important than hanging out in the pub for three hours. (Authentic Heather knows that it might be, but it also probably is not.)
I think that the truth is that we are all some version of both. The people that love us and know us the best are those who know our "authentic" self and can put up with it when it is particularly self-centered or just downright annoying. They also know when to tell us that we are being TOO "perfomative"; they know when we have left much too much of our authentic selves behind. And isn't that always the battle? To balance these two theories of self-hood so that we live the very best of who we truly (note I refrain from using "authentically") are?
Performative Heather hopes that no one reads this post. Authentic Heather hopes they do.
Addendum: The text in question was an excerpt entitled, "Observing the Performance Self: Multiplicity versus Authenticity" from "My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture" by Susan Blum.
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