Ossorio: "When did you add ‘in a dramaturgical pattern’ to the definition of a Person? Why?"

This is another one of those things where I could have talked about the impact on the existing formulation. It seems to me that in recent years, I’ve talked about the dramaturgical model, so that just that notion should not be strange to most people. Now there’s another consideration, and it comes back to the definition of pathology and also the definition of a person as an individual who paradigmatically has a history of Deliberate Action. And then there’s the notion of a definition within a system vs. a simple, isolated definition.

And here’s the thing: within a system you can define things in a way that isn’t really true and get away with it. For example, if I were just doing it in isolation, I would not define a person as an individual whose history is paradigmatically a history of Deliberate Action, because there’s more to it than that. However, since other parts of the system guarantee the remaining parts, you only need this much to generate the concept of a person if you stay within the system. If you don’t, if you’re just introducing it ad hoc, then you’ve got to include all of these things somehow.

And again it’s a matter of taste or aesthetic judgment how much you do include. If you’ve got some choice that you can leave some things out and include other things in, how much do you include? Well, the introduction of the dramaturgical model I thought was important enough to bring that in and include that in the definition.

And as far as when I did that, the answer is "Today". [laughter] That’s why I gave it a pregnant pause before I said that. Yeah, this is the first time I’ve made that official.

Audience: And you’re using dramaturgical pattern?

Ossorio: Yeah. Dramaturgical pattern is based on the model of a social practice. It’s an episode. And that’s what human life consists of, is this kind of episode. The discussion of self-concept depended on that, that you live your life not just engaged in this Deliberate Action followed by another one followed by another one. What you’re living is meaningful patterns of Deliberate Actions. And the closest approximation we have is a social practice. So that’s what I mean by a dramaturgical pattern. You have to have that kind of history, not just a history of Deliberate Action.

Okay. Any questions about that?

Audience: Hasn’t there been more to the dramaturgical pattern when you’ve talked about it before, or am I confusing different...?

Ossorio: Well, there’s more to the dramaturgical model, and I’m drawing on that when I talk about a dramaturgical pattern.

Audience: Okay.

Audience: Could you say real briefly what the use of the term ‘dramaturgical’ -- There’s the little core piece ‘drama’ there -- what that adds to it particularly? Are there any other terms that might come close to doing justice to it? What’s prominent and good about the term ‘dramaturgical’?

Ossorio: Well, dramaturgical model is what I have adopted as a name for that particular model, but it’s not accidental that I call it ‘dramaturgical’. Because the terminology, the most explicitly worked out versions of that kind of thing, come from drama. And if you have five minutes, I bet you could say why.

Audience: Why?

Ossorio: Remember what drama is.

Audience: You haven’t given us five minutes.

Ossorio: Drama has to do with the lives of people. So when you have a discipline designed to analyze this and organize it, guess what? What could be a better way of organizing the lives of real people?

Audience: ‘Dramaturgical’ is a status in the theatre community. It’s the status of a person who’s not a playwright or a director or anything, but who says "What is this story? What’s going on here?" to clarify that for people so they would have a better sense of how to put on this play or what it’s about.

Ossorio: Yeah, other people have used the term ‘dramaturgical’, and they’ve done the same kind of thing. They’ve borrowed from drama some of the analytic apparatus. You know they’ve been made fun of for that, but as I say, what would you pick as the best set of analytic tools if not tools that were expressly designed to deal with the lives of people, if that’s what you’re interested in?

Audience: Pete, I think it’s worth adding that it’s not just the lives of people. It’s also about things that matter.

Ossorio: Yeah. If you think about what a drama is, it’s not just a sample in the lives of some possible somebody. If it’s a good drama, those episodes are meaningful in a way that most days in the life of an ordinary person are not. That’s one reason why drama is one of the things that gives us access to the systematic possibilities that we would never encounter in real life. They in effect are specifically picked out and designed for that.

Audience: Why hadn’t you added the dramaturgical model until today? I mean in a dramaturgical manner. I’m not saying it right.

Audience: Pattern.

Ossorio: Because I never had occasion to. [laughter]

Audience: Aw cmon.

Audience: But I mean it begins to sound like a necessary ingredient.

Ossorio: Well, that’s what I’m saying by putting it in. But look, the last paper I wrote was about three years ago and it was a paper on ontology. There’s simply no place to put that in. Before that it was the one on self-concept, but that’s a chapter in the book. It’s not generally published. So when would I have put it in? I’ve talked to people, and officially I did it today. It’s been in there for some time, but this was the first occasion in which it made sense to make it public, you might say.

Audience: Walter says it’s okay. [laughter]