We have long reached peak performativity in society. Of course, there has always been an element of performance, and if I could control my reading to just Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, then I would likely give you a nice little overview of the work on this subject. I’m going to have to come back to that as I have a feeling this is going to become a series of posts. I think, if I were a different kind of person, I would be talking about “wokery” right now. I hate that word. I hated it when the self-righteously inclusive self-proclaimed themselves as “woke”, and I still hate it now those without broadly inclusive politics justifiably use it as an insult against those who proclaim broadly inclusive politics. Even as I type this, there is so much to unpack. What do I mean by “peak performativity”? What do I
I used to hate Russell Brand. I say hate, but what I really mean is that I wrote him off as an unredeemable, facile, vacuous misogynist. He became an irrelevance to me. Needless to say, I have changed my mind because he has clearly changed. He is now asking really interesting questions and making really interesting points. He has become someone I enjoy listening to; someone I frequently find myself in agreement with. Really, this post isn’t about Russell Brand, although I highly recommend watching his YouTube channel. This post is actually about myself and an aspect of “cancel culture”: the denial of human growth.