The American Face Performance by S Rocha

     The Claude S. Fisher chapter particularly resonated with me in his conversation on the 

American search for self.  The application of principles from this discussion allows us to look at the performance world around us as well as within us.  We are the constructs of script and presentation that dictates the social or political demands of the moment.  This goes back to our discussions on authenticity, the search for the real-self and how human sincerity is achieved or more specifically, how it can be actualized in this western construction.  I say construction, because the readings in this class have carefully led us through the foundations of European imperialist notions. These notions became tenets of a belief system that distinguished the common from the bourgeoisie. It fueled the misconception of the inequality of humanity that existed between varying social and ethnic groups.  And this is just within the context of Europe.  The response to variations in culture, language and image as existed on the frontier of the titled America, extended a now Euro-American search for self within the contextual challenges created by the dynamics of land and Others—all directed by the manifest manners (see Gerald Vizenor) that drove their oxen forward. 

     In the 21^st century, we as the Other, continue our struggle with the character personas we assume and the scripts that shape them.  We strive to deconstruct the illusion that the script is necessary and yet, in order to survive (not alone function) within the theater of what I will assert is indeed a neocolonial production, we try to “improve our characters” in order to defend our status (204).  Not unlike Fisher describes as the American endeavor to both authenticate the self while risking the “psychological disorientation and stress” of social “costume changing” (Ibid).

     Fisher’s discussion is so fascinating and illuminating because it gives insight into the essence of character and authenticity that guides the American conception of self.  It also insinuates that there is another way to re-imagine a psychology of authenticity.  For the so-called folk, there is an entirely different set of values or ways of understanding how the self manages and sustains.  For lack of time and space, I will not go into depth on this except to say, as Fisher notes, in other cultures there are variances in how groups reflect upon themselves and construct themselves.  In short form, if folk have what is essentially a spiritual/social/cultural framework still in tact, one that is not colonized or disassembled under the weight of the American imaginary, then there exists a praxis for maintaining health.  Health interconnects the spiritual, emotional, physical and spiritual and is based on ancient modes of human sustenance. Fisher frames a similar notion for twentieth century America as happiness scholarship (239).  The folk might call it “the ways”. 

     And in jest, I say that Facebook might define it as the “Profile Page”.