From: mittle@watson.ibm.com (Josh Mittleman)
Subject: Re: What is a Persona?
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 21:03:29 GMT
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

Greetings from Arval!  The discussions on the nature and purpose of persona
have been of great interest.  I would like to offer a few thoughts.

"Persona" has at least two meanings in the SCA.  On one hand it is simply
how one fits oneself into the medieval world of the SCA.  In that sense it
covers everything from the purely SCA-oriented attitude stereotypical of
the West Kingdom to the kind of living-history practiced by Cariadoc and
others.  On the other hand "persona" means "a fiction that one uses to
place oneself somewhere and somewhen in medieval history."  Some people
have no persona in this sense, though many people have at least a little:
They concentrate on a period of history or an area of medieval Europe that
interests them, they restrict their conversation and activities at events
to medieval topics and pastimes.  It seems to me that people who decry
"persona games" or who claim to have no persona are thinking only of the
latter sense of the word; only someone who has no SCA name and never
considers himself part of the Society could have no persona in the former
sense. 

Consider the stereotypical Westerner: "I'm just a simple country knight."
This person has an SCA name and a clear vision of his own standing in the
SCA.  That is his persona, but it has none of the play-acting elements
associated with the latter meaning of the word.  

Consider Duke Cariadoc (forgive me if I misrepresent you, your Grace).  His
persona is a Berber traveller who has found himself in the lands of the
Twelve Kingdoms, where he has achieved considerable status and fame as a
warrior, ruler, diplomat, storyteller, etc.  This is the opposite extreme:
The world of the SCA is integrated into his persona, and he does his best
to approach it as would a Berber lord of his time.

Many people lie somewhere between these two poles: Most of their activity
is undertaken in their SCA-persona, but they focus some of their attention
on a particular time and place.  Part of my persona is a peer of the East,
a senior advisor to the Eastern Crown, and a senior herald.  The fact that
I try to focus some of my interests and activities on those which fit the
life of a northern French herald of the 14th century has little to do with
that side of my persona, but it is important to my life in the SCA.

Persona is a tool for directing one's activities in the SCA.  It defines
how you interact with the Crown, your peers, your vassals and overlords,
etc.  In that sense everyone has a persona, i.e. some view of his role in
the Twelve Kingdoms.  Persona can be a tool for focussing one's research on
life in one time and place in medieval Europe and presenting the fruits of
that research to others in the SCA.  In that sense most of us have only a
loosely-defined persona and few maintain a consistent persona, but those
who do are playing a different game from those at the opposite extreme:
They are experimenting in living history, trying to learn what is might be
like to _be_ another person.  Graydon put this excellently: A persona in
this latter sense "...is a way to organize the information around medieval
*doings*, rather than medieval *studies*."  As Tadhg apparently would
argue, one cannot possibly achieve the goal of actually being someone else,
but one can learn from the attempt.  These two notions of persona are
evidence of two fundamentally different approaches to medieval recreation
as it is undertaken in the SCA.  I think it is self-defeating to claim that
one or the other is superior; both have their advantages and drawbacks.
The SCA has room for both.

When teaching a class, one can take either approach: One can teach about a
subject relevent to medieval culture, or one can try to teach a subject
from the point of view of a medieval person.  Layamon's description of his
class on Arthurian literature is clearly an example of the former approach:
He is teaching about medieval literature from the modern point-of-view.
The latter approach would probably require omitting information that you
know, or even giving inaccurate information!  The purpose of that class
would not primarily be to teach the Arthurian cycle, but to teach what a
12th century Cantabrigian knows about the cycle and how he thinks about it.
There are certainly dangers inherent in this approach to recreation,
notably the strong tendency to conclude that you know how a medieval person
thought and can put your own intuition before research.  That is a trap
into which many have fallen: We cannot possibly achieve that goal.  The
primacy of evidence must always be maintained.  I could not maintain this
approach to the SCA, because I don't believe I know enough to support the
illusion, for others or for myself.  However, it might be a useful exercise
to try to do it for one event; I expect that I would learn a great deal
about what I don't know.

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Arval Benicoeur                                       mittle@watson.ibm.com