My Father, My Self Employing a Sociological Imagination to Transcend the Imaginary in Both Self and Society

"Liberation, then, depends first upon the realization of the truth about our condition." --Kathleen Riordan Speeth I became angry recently when my father tried to take my dog to my sister's room for the night. To me, he was insinuating that I would neglect to take him to my own room, and allow the dog to run amuck during the night. I became intensely angry at him and at everyone else I live with, though this time, I internalized the anger and said nothing. I have, on occasion, reacted in a much more volatile fashion. In reality, his decision to take the dog was probably based on past instances in which I had forgotten to do as needed. He most likely intended no personal slight toward me in taking the dog, and did so without malice. The perceived slight stems from my own disappointment with myself for not living up to my own standard of responsibility and for allowing my actions or inactions to present to others a self which does not measure up to that which I desire to be. Erving Goffman tells us that ... the individual may deeply involve his ego in his identification with a particular establishment, and group, and in his self-conception as someone who does not disrupt social interaction or let down the social units which depend upon that interaction. When a disruption occurs, then, we may find that the self-conceptions around which his personality has been built may become discredited. These are consequences that disruptions may have from the point of view of individual personality. (quoted in Farganis, 362) Because of the nature of human perception, and its tentative relationship to reality, many of our perceptions are in part imaginary. This is because they are constructed from within a socio-historically situated biographical nexus of needs met and feelings created through our primary and secondary socializations. It is imperative, therefore, for one to gain self-knowledge through a critical investigation of one's own biography in order to gain awareness of the imaginary aspects of the way one tells one's own story to both oneself and others and how it determines his or her motivations and consequent actions. Autobiography itself is a type of "social interaction in which one tries to influence others" (Bjorklund, 17). This being true, the writer of an autobiography, in choosing what he or she will write goes through the same role taking process that goes on in any symbolic interaction. In selecting the content of the narrative the same social forces apply. "Life histories are accounts, representations of lives, not lives actually lived," Bjorklund adds. Our conceptions of our own lives are subject to our own interpretation and definition. We define our own roles, and assume the role of the audience when we write; the purpose of the tale we tell is contingent on our perception of each. "It would indeed be a nice problem in the descriptive geometry of narrative," Ralph Keeler writes, "to determine the exact point where the lines of the two interests meet, that of the narrator and that of the people who have to endure the narration" (Bjorklund 16-17). These facts will inevitably affect the content of this very essay. The individual is the implement of social change. If one can recognize the imaginary aspects of one's own perceptions and through this awareness try better to form one's actions in the best interest of a definition of the situation that is grounded in the real then one will be better able to discern the real needs of self and other and act in an appropriate proximity to where the two intersect. By doing so one contributes to the chain of individual actions that make up society as a whole in a constructive way. Therefore to reduce the reliance on the imaginary in the individual is to reduce the imaginary in society as well. The desired outcome of course is still a compromise between many selves and others but one that is located closer to the needs of the situation at the place where self and other meet. …