Performativity in Our Everyday Lives: Where Does the Act Start and End?

By Adam Murphy

Something I’ve noticed my dad doing is whenever he speaks to someone, he will change his accent slightly to mimic someone. Originally from Kildare, that accent only comes up when we visit family up there, and if he’s asking for directions from someone in North Cork, he gets a Norrie twinge to his tone. This got me thinking, what is his real accent? When talking to me he has a different accent than when talking to his parents, so who is he lying to? Or is he lying at all? To what extent are the things we do performative in general?

I’m not going to pretend like I can answer that question, but it’s something that I’ve worried about myself recently. How do I know if I’m enjoying the thing I’m doing because I have fun doing it or because I like being seen doing it? Even in the case of things I do on my own, like reading, for example, I find myself wishing I had someone to share the experience with, someone who has read the book too so we can talk about it. If I enjoyed the event purely for its own sake, then surely I wouldn't care if others felt the same way about it? But if I want to talk to people about these solo experiences, am I doing them so I can talk about them? 

Obviously social media has an effect on me and how I see things, and while I rarely post anything, I still see what everyone else posts. Everyone knows the whole ‘social media isn’t real’ shtick by now so I won’t talk about it, but I think knowing it’s not an accurate portrayal of life is much easier to remember in theory versus when you see a friend posting about some amazing thing they did. If I get inspired by an influencer to start running, am I doing it because I want to improve my life, or because I want to live theirs? It’s probably a mixture of both, but whether it’s 50/50 or 90/10, I have no idea, and that scares me.

What if I don’t actually like the things I do? If we take it one step further, how can I enjoy anything if I know deep down that part of the reason for my enjoyment comes from being perceived to be doing it? If it was only about the activity, would other people’s reactions mean anything? If I go to the gym, who am I trying to look better for? I’d like to think it’s myself but it can’t be purely that. Maybe I’m alone in worrying about this, that’s partly why I’m writing about it, and even then, am I writing about it because I actually care or because if it gets published then loads of people will see me caring?

Worrying about status is a very human trait. We’re incredibly social and so obviously it’s an important thing to be well liked among your peers. That doesn’t make me feel better though. Maybe I’m under a false assumption, like doing something for status doesn’t count. That’s probably part of it; to me. enjoying something alone is a more ‘pure’ form of enjoyment, the same way donating anonymously to charity is ‘better’ in some way, even though the money is the same. Some part of me needs to be seen, yet another does not want to. I considered asking for this to be anonymous, like that would prove my point to myself, and to you, but at the end of the day this is a one way street of information, and if I don’t put my name out there then I’m never going to get an answer to all these questions. Not that I think there is an answer, but a new perspective, I guess that’s what I’m hoping to get from this.

Society of the Spectable by Guy Debord, via bookupstairs.ie

If we want to get really in depth about it, we can look at it from a sociological perspective. In Guy Debord’s Society of The Spectacle, he dissects how modern life has become more about ‘having’ or ‘experiencing’ than ‘being’. It feels like a cliche at this point to start blaming capitalism but of course it has a part to play in all this. It is where experiencing and being separate. In a society where the appearance of having is more important than having itself, the appearance of being also becomes more important than being itself. This is a pretty terrifying concept, to me at least, because the experience becomes more about having experienced it, rather than the experience on its own. The distinction here is very small, but very important. Things like recording concerts, taking pictures of your food, taking pictures in front of landmarks, who are they for? I for one have never watched back a concert video, they’re usually shaky, the audio is terrible and my singing voice is even worse. I’ve been to the leaning tower of Pisa, I enjoyed it. You get a good twenty seconds of ‘Wow, it really is leaning a lot’ before it stops being interesting. I still took a picture of it, but I don't know why. According to Debord, the reason we do these things is to have proof that they happened, a way to show others that we have experienced these things. Not that it’s wrong to want to show off the cool things you did, but if they’re only cool because you get to show off, is it really worth anything? When the line blurs between these two, I begin to worry. 

One of the core ideas of the book is that the spectacle negates life by depicting only the appearance of things. The definition of the spectacle is a bit nebulous, but we’ll say it is the way we view the world we have not directly experienced. Of course the only thing that can be conveyed accurately to us is the appearance of these things, yet by doing this we lose all nuance of the event. Life is not a series of events, spectacles, images, yet this is the depiction we are shown inadvertently. This self regulates where the new generation see this, understand that this is how life is to be lived and so present themselves in this way too. So subconsciously, when I grow up seeing how others live their life through these images, and only through those images, I place importance on these things too. Once again, how much importance isn’t something I can know, and so I worry that I have become part of the group where being becomes having becomes appearing.

Let’s take this one step further. I act differently around different groups of people, I’ll play up certain interests I have and downplay others, be more or less talkative depending on the vibes of the people I’m with, use a different kind of humour even. So what personality is my real one? It can’t be an amalgamation of them all as they can contradict each other at times. I never feel like I’m lying either, I'm not pretending to be someone else when I do this. So what’s going on? Is there any aspect of me that is actually real, untainted by the existence of others? I don’t think so. Maybe my idea of being genuine is just incorrect. 

I asked my dad about the whole accent thing, he never realised he did it. I think that means they’re all his real accents, he was never putting anything on so they were all genuine, sure they were influenced by those around him, but he still made the accent and he wasn’t lying when he did it. Does that mean that if I don’t think I’m being performative, then I’m not? That whatever I do, as long as I’m not actively deceiving people, I’m being true to myself? It’s a nice idea, and I would love it if it could convince me. I am unsatisfied, the idea that my worries are unfounded, that Me with a capital M does not exist, I am not sure if that reality is one I can accept. Especially since I’m constantly thinking about it, does trying to be more real actually make me less real? Am I trying to be someone who does not exist, myself? I’m not going to stop doing the things I enjoy, I do still enjoy them, whether intrinsically or extrinsically. I might just have to accept the fact that I live in the real world, where things are real and things are fake, and some are both.