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.

About this Episode

In this introductory video for Chapter 6, The Holographic Human: A Romance of Many Dimensions, we begin a speculative exploration into what it means to be a character-playing human being, beyond the limits of social identity. Drawing inspiration from Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland and holography, this episode lays the groundwork for a deeper distinction between the social agent and the human being. What happens when we mistake a flattened social identity for the full complexity of self? How might a holographic model of the human being invite new ways of understanding character, selfhood, and personal multiplicity?

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

Tallulah Bankhead Performance Sketch

References

- Abbott, Edwin A. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. London: Penguin, 1998.

- Thorpe, Jerry. “The Celebrity Next Door.” The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, Season 1, Episode 2. CBS, 3 December 1957. Image source: https://papermoonloveslucy.tumblr.com...

About this Episode

What does it mean to do research “in character”? In this concluding episode of Chapter 5, we explore how different internal personas—like the academic, the runner, the cynic, or the dreamer—might shape the kind of knowledge we produce. Extending the well-known concept of research positionality beyond the social agent, this video asks: what if the diversity of self within a single human being could enrich academic inquiry, just like diversity across a community does?

Through a critical reflection on authorship, epistemology and performance practice, this video proposes that acknowledging and even inviting inner character diversity could improve the rigour and scope of research.

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

- Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Translated by Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001.

- Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.

- Crawford, Kate, and Trevor Paglen. “Excavating AI: The Politics of Images in Machine Learning Training Sets.” September 19, 2019. https://excavating.ai.

- de Lange, Catherine. “Know Yourself.” New Scientist, May 21, 2022, 42–45.

- Graeber, David, and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. London: Allen Lane, 2021.

- Gross, Rachel E. Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage. New York: W. W. Norton, 2022.

- Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575–99.

- Ranković, Miloš and Slavica. “Art in the Time of Contractions.” MIDIRS Midwifery Digest 24, no. 4 (December 2014): 536–38.

- Warner, Marina. Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.