About this Episode

In this episode, we unpack the distinction between the social agent—the consistent character we present to others—and the human being: the universal character-playing machine that runs it. The video explores how society encourages character consistency while masking our underlying capacity for behavioural diversity. Drawing on Erving Goffman's phrase—"the bureaucratisation of spirit"—we consider how social roles become fixed, how character predictability facilitates social cooperation and how personal diversity is often sacrificed in favour of social coherence. What do we stand to lose and gain when we accept the habitual conflation of the social agent with the human being?

About this Series

Scripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agency in the Age of AI is a video lecture series based on Dr Katarina Ranković’s practice-based PhD in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Combining philosophy, performance, creative writing, and AI theory, the series explores how our understanding of the self shapes our personal lives, our politics, and our relationship to intelligent technologies.

Links

Series Playlist: https://bit.ly/sfa-series

PhD thesis (PDF format): https://bit.ly/sfa-pdf

Thesis artworks: https://bit.ly/sfa-art

References

- Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. London: Routledge, 2011.

- de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. London: Vintage Books, 2011.

- Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin, 1990.

- Ranković, Miloš. “Something like thinking, that is, intervenes.” Academia.edu. https://www.academia.edu/5879590/_Som....

- Santayana, George. Cited in Erving Goffman, _The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life_. London: Penguin, 1990.

- Shakespeare, William. _As You Like It_. Edited by H. J. Oliver. London: Penguin, 2015.