Many Masks, Many Selves

Author(s): Wendy Doniger

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Daedalus, Vol. 135, No. 4, On Identity (Fall, 2006), pp. 60-71
Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20028073 .
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Wendy Doniger

Many masks, many selves

In both real life and mythology, peo 'Arab' of the sort put out by Hollywood.

ple set out to become other people but, The modern Orient, in short, partici
or double own
through a kind of triple cross1 pates in its Orientalizing."2 Orien
back, end up as themselves, masquerad talism, like other forms of political dom

ing as other people who turn out to be ination, has also inspired what James
as them. Sometimes en Scott has taught us to recognize as the
masquerading
tire ethnicities indulge in this self-imi arts of resistance, the weapons of the
tation. The inhabitants of places known weak,3 which include a kind of appar
for their ethnic charm, where tourism ent self-mockery that actually mocks
has become a
major industry, conscious the mockers. There are so many exam

ly exaggerate their own stereotypes to

ples, but in this essay Iwill consider just
the visitors : the British on the those in two broad categories :
please lay politics
a shovel, the Irish their and gender.
'ye olde' with
blarney, the Parisians their disdain for
tourists. The politics of colonialism Individuals are often driven to self-im
produced another, more serious sort of
personation through the pressure of
in this case perhaps uncon The sorts of public
self-parody, public expectations.
scious :Edward Said wrote of "the para who are nowadays called icons
figures
dox of an Arab regarding himself as an are often famous for
nothing but being
famous. Politicians, in particular, are

i The Oxford English Dictionary defines

Wendy Doniger, a Fellow of theAmerican Acad 'triple
cross' thus : "The
act of one party in
emy since 1989, isMir cea Eliade Professor of the a transaction
betraying
to the oth
by pretending betray
History of Religions at theUniversity of Chicago er, or of betraying a person who has betrayed
"
Divinity School and director of theMartin Mar another. I am paying the word a bit extra,

tyCenter. Among her numerous publications are as

Humpty Dumpty would say, to extend its

"Siva: The Erotic Ascetic" (1973),"The Origins to the act of as a per

meaning masquerading
son who has masqueraded as another
of Evil inHindu Mythology" (1976), "Splitting
person.

theDifference: Gender andMyth inAncient

2 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York :Vin
Greece and India" (1999), and "TheWoman 325.
tage Books, 1978),
Who Pretended toBeWho SheWas" (2005).
3 James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Re
? 2006 by the American of Arts sistance (New Haven, Conn., and London :Yale
Academy
& Sciences University Press, 1990).

6o D dalus Fall 2006

great self-imitators. Hillary Rodham Reagan had conjured up this imagi Many
masks,
Clinton once reported: "Suddenly
a nary war record, the film actor playing
many
woman came up to me. 'You sure look the part of a real actor in history. Can selves
non
like Hillary Clinton,' she said. 'So I'm explains how it happened:
told,' I answered."4 And when an actor
Films are real to His
Reagan. performance
becomes a the felonies
actually politician inNormandy recalled the experiences of
are Consider the self-imi -
compounded. an actor who wore his
Captain Reagan
tation of film actors who play the parts uniform to work in Culver City, played the
of politicians who then become actors.
lead role in This Is theArmy and participat
When Ronald Reagan auditioned for
ed in a top-secret project used to train U.S.
the role of the president of the United
States in the i960 Broadway production bombing crews for their destructive raids
on Tokyo. As Reagan tells the story, "Our
of Gore Vidal's play "The Best Man," -
about a presidential special effects men Hollywood geniuses
election, Vidal -
in uniform built a complete miniature
turned him down because he didn't
of Tokyo"6 on a sound stage, above which
think Reagan would be believable as
a crane and camera mount.
they rigged
the president. When asked about this
in 2002, Vidal said, "Reagan was a first They then photographed the miniature,
showing the targets as they would look
rate actor as a President."5
from planes flying at different altitudes
Indeed he was. Lou Cannon, in his
and speeds under varying weather condi
aptly named biography, President Rea tions. was the narrator,
Reagan guiding
gan :The Role of a Lifetime, tells how, at
the June 6,1984, celebrations on Omaha pilots onto their targets 7

Beach, commemorating the Normandy This war game, the antecedent

of the
invasion, Reagan, who had never been computer games play,
en
that children
outside of the United States during abled pilots, real pilots, to practice their
-
World War II, "gave the impression of bomb runs on Tokyo real bomb runs
returning to Normandy," to the utter that Hollywood would then reenact in

mystification of the other world lead fictionalized films like Thirty Seconds Ov
Elizabeth II of er as ar
ers, includingQueen Tokyo (1944). Thus, Garry Wills
Britain, Queen Beatrix I of the Nether war service was "based
gued, Reagan's
lands, and Francois Mitterand, who had on the defense of faking
principled
actually been captured by the Germans things."8
and escaped from a POW camp. (In fact, This was Reagan's war. As he told Lan
more recent evidence of Mitterand's seen too many
don Parvin, "Maybe I had
connection with in the early days war movies, the heroics of which I some
Vichy
of World War II indicates that he, too,
could turn and turn about.)
6 Ronald and Richard G. Hubler,
Reagan
4 Hillary Rodham Clinton's first newspaper Where s theRest ofMe ?The Autobiography of
column, copied in the New York Times, July 24, Ronald Reagan (New York :Karz Publishers,
1995, A10. 1981), 137.

5 Interview in Cape Cod Times, 7 Lou President :The Role a

July 13, 2002, Cannon, Reagan of
C2. More
precisely, in 2002, Vidal said, "Yes, Lifetime (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991),
I turned him down on the grounds that he was 485-486.
not for an Adlai
right Stevenson-style politician
while was. The has been 8 Garry Wills, s America York :
Melvyn Douglas joke Reagan (New
refashioned over the years." Books, 164.
Penguin 1988),

D dalus Fall 2006 6l

Wendy times with real life."9 When
confused ning for governor of California, Warner,
Doniger was on a
on Oliver North exposed and put always quick to recognize casting blun
identity trial, Reagan's comment was, "It's going der, protested, 'No, no! Jimmy Stewart
to make a great movie."10 As an actor, for governor, Ronald Reagan for best
he had helped real fighter pilots bomb a friend.'"13

fake Tokyo ;as an actor pretending to be But something even more invidious
a on a real battlefield was by Reagan's imper
president, walking accomplished
with a real war veteran who had become sonation of a president. The masking
of France, Reagan could not and unmasking went in both directions,
president
his performance in films finally exposing not just Reagan but the
distinguish
about World War II from his (nonexist part he was Because of Reagan,
playing.
ent) performance inWorld War II. He as David put it, "The fraudu
Thompson
was narrating the plot of a war film he'd lence of the Presidency was revealed so
-
starred in, which like so much of what that the office could never quite be hon
- was more
passed for his memory real ored again." In retrospect, we saw that
to him than reality, so much so other glamorous presidents, like Ken
simpler,
much more flattering to his vanity.11 nedy, had also been impersonating pres
as
Vidal always referred to Reagan idents. And F.D.R. ? And Lincoln? Why
"our acting President,"12 which became was the character in The Truman Show
the title of a book about Reagan in which (about a person whose life is entirely en
the following anecdote appears : "His cased within a television serial that he
entry into politics inspired
a famous ut mistakes for real life) named after a pres
-
terance by his former studio boss Jack ident indeed, a president famous for
Warner. When told that Reagan was run his blunt honesty and lack of preten
sions?
9 Cannon, President Reagan, 486. Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of
California, has been well trained for the
10 Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett,
part: he starred in three self-imitation
John
TheMyth of theAmerican Superhero (Grand
Mich. :
William B. Eerdmans,
movies (Total Recall, True Lies, and The
Rapids, 2002),
Sixth Day). Many have sighed in relief at
338.
the knowledge that, born in Austria, he
11 Still more bizarre, but less amusing, is the can't be president. But here's an alarm
that had told Israeli Prime Min
report Reagan
his November
ing bit of trivia. In the film Demolition
ister Yitzhak Shamir, during Man (1993), John Spartan (Sylvester Stal
29,1983, visit to the White House, and Simon

Wiesenthal, on a 16,1984, visit, that lone), who is frozen in a coma in 1996

February
he had photographed the Nazi death camps. and thawed out in 2032 (when the movie
[Cannon, President Reagan, 487.] Reagan later is set), discovers the Schwarzenegger
denied this story and said merely that he had aston
Presidential Library. He expresses
seen "secret" films of Eisenhower's visit to the
ishment (perhaps because it is not the
town of Ohrdruf on 12,1945, a week after
April
seen a film
Stallone Presidential Library?) that "the
its liberation. In fact, he had that
was viewed the United actor" could have been
president. His
widely throughout
States at that time.
colleague (Sandra Bullock) then explains
that, even though Schwarzenegger was
12 Personal communication from Mike Mac

donald, 2002. But Norman Mailer

September
- and Gary Paul Gates, The Act
in i960 the year that 13 Bob Schieffer
(cited by Alan Brinkley
Vidal turned down Reagan) said that Kennedy ing President (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1989),
was the first actor as 167.
president.

62 D dalus Fall 2006

not born in this country, he was so pop have had this story inmind in his fa Many
mous masks,
ular at the time that people passed a rejoinder to Dan Quayle in Oma
many
"6ist Amendment, which states that..." ha, Nebraska, on October 5,1988 : "Sen selves
-
Stallone interrupts " her by saying, "I ator, you're no Jack Kennedy." Uncer
don't wanna know. tainty regarding the original date of the
Out of the mouths of hunks : since anecdote makes it unclear whether the
election as governor, is on the sexual,
Schwarzenegger's political joke punning
there has been amovement to ratify an or the sexual on the political.
amendment to the Constitution so that Bill Clinton's great contributions to
he can run for president, and Schwarze this genre, such as making it X-rated,
negger himself has publicly expressed
were capped by the film Wag theDog
his belief that immigrants should be (1997), in which a embroiled
president
allowed to run for president. Moreover, in a sex scandal deflects public attention
in amove eerily reminiscent of Reagan's from the scandal by selling a fictitious
old unsuccessful bid for the role of presi war film to the American as if it
people
in Gore Vidal's were real news awar against
dent play, Schwarzeneg footage of
ger almost failed to be cast in his greatest Albania. That film-within-a-film was
role, the Terminator, in 1984 because the cited after September 11 to
implicitly
director, James Cameron, had O. J. Simp undercut President Bush's use of the
son inmind lost it war and war
for the part; Simpson footage, against first Af
to Schwarzenegger, however, because, as ghanistan and then Iraq, to avert public
Cameron told Esquire, "People wouldn't unrest at the collapse of the stock mar
have believed a nice guy like O. J. ket and the failing economy at large. In
playing
the part of a ruthless killer. "14 Michael Moore's documentary Fahren
The implications of this comparative heit 9/11 (2004), Afghanistan became the

judgment
are
chilling. So is the further title of aWestern movie starring Bush

distancing from reality implied in the and Cheney. A book about Homeland
belief that Schwarzenegger is imitating Security, reviewed under the title "Just
a :the Like in the Movies," details procedures
Reagan (imitating president)
title of aNew York Times article about that one reviewer said "lends itself to

Schwarzenegger's bid for governor was dramatization at a theater near you,"

"An Actor, Yes, but No Ronald Rea with "a broad roster of castable charac
was already an imitation ters" and a great deal of fantasy, includ
gan."15 This
a
a
of well-known joke about Jack Kenne ing 2002 counterterrorism exercise
:The story went that a woman said that involved "over a dozen current and
dy
of every man she slept with, "He's great, former officials role-playing the presi
but he's no Jack Kennedy," until she fi dent and the National Security Coun
nally got to sleep with Kennedy himself cil."16 Once faith is shaken, it is hard to
and reported, "Great, but no Jack Ken it out of free fall.
keep
Bentsen may or may not
nedy." Lloyd

14 Anthony Lane, "Metal Guru :Terminator 3 :

Rise of the Machines," New Yorker, July 14 and i6 Matthew Brzezinski, Fortress America :On the
-
Front Lines An
21,2003,85-86. of Homeland Security Inside Look
at the Surveillance State (New York :Ban
Coming
15 Dean E. Murphy, "An Actor, Yes, but No tam Books, 2004) ; reviewed Eakin,
by Hugh
Ronald New York Times, 10, "Just Like in the Movies," New York Times Book
Reagan," August
2003, sec. 4,1. Review, November 7, 2004, 9.

D dalus Fall 2006 63

Wendy can to be their own gen After d'Eon announced that he was a
Jteople pretend
Doniger
on ders via other genders. A man pretend woman, he insisted that he did not want
awoman
identity ing to be pretending to be a to wear women's
clothing but had the
man, or awoman pretending to be a right to wear his
dragoon's uniform.
man to be a woman, is in Still wearing men's in France,
pretending clothing
-
double drag or, as the New York Times apparently concealing but actually re
headline reviewing the 1995 musical vealing his anatomical sex, he encour
Victor/Victoria called it, "in Drag, in aged people to conjure up the two neg
Drag." Literature and film abound in atives that cancelled one another out.
:Rosalind
such characters pretending That triple cross explains how
sexual
to be Ganymede pretending to be Ros d'Eon got away with it. Apparently, as
alind, in Shakespeare's As You Like It; Ju as no one with any status in Paris
long
lie Andrews awoman had any knowledge of d'Eon's male ana
playing pretend
a
ing to be man pretending to be awom tomy (and the strange thing is that no
an, in the film Victor/Victoria (1982) ;and one did: he was either celi
apparently
so many more. Let us here consider two bate or very, very careful), he was safe
historical the Chevalier d'Eon from accusations or rumors from peo
figures,
and Casanova.
ple who had known him in the prov
In a case from recorded eighteenth inces. (Half of his names are women's
century French history, the Chevalier names, but the French do that.) He set
d'Eon turned out to be aman who pre it up in such away that he could not
tended to be a transvestite. This is the lose. He was able to project his fantasies
story: upon the people he fooled without ac

Once a time, more on tually changing anything, just making

upon precisely
other people imagine him differently.
October 5,1728, a child named Charles
Genevi?ve Louis Auguste Andr?a Thi People later remarked that he had
looked more feminine in his uniform
moth?e d'Eon, also known as Charles de
than he did later in a dress. Like the fools
Beaumont, was born to a
low-ranking new
in the tale of the emperor's clothes,
nobleman in the town of Tonnerre in Bur
who persuaded themselves and one
gundy. The child grew up to have a distin another that they didn't see the emper
guished career as a diplomat and spy and or's nude body, the French courtiers
a in the and was hon
captain dragoons
imagined that d'Eon's 'invisible' nude
ored with the title of Chevalier for his
was what he told them itwas (fe
in the Seven Years' War. In 1770, body
bravery
male) and discounted what they actual
rumors that he was a woman to cir
began
culate in France and England, and in 1776 ly saw (male). A French humorist once
remarked, points at a wom
Louis XVI officially announced that d'Eon "Somebody
an and utters a horrified cry, 'Look at
was and had always been awoman. The
her, what a shame, under her clothes,
as she now became '
she is totally naked ! "l8 It's not that 'the
Chevali?re, known,
left France and lived the rest of her life as
Chevalier has no clothes' but, rather,
awoman in London. When she died, on
that 'the Chevalier is naked only beneath
May 21,1810, itwas discovered that she
was male.17 i8 Lacan, Allais, in his
anatomically Jacques citing Alphonse
1986 seminar, "The Ethic of Psychoanalysis."
17 Gary Kates, Monsieur d'Eon is a Woman :A Cited by Slavoj Zizek, "How Did Marx Invent
Tale of Political Intrigue and Sexual Masquerade the Symptom?" in The Sublime Object of Ideology
(New York: Basic Books, 1995). (London :Verso, 1989), 11 - 54, 28 - 29.

64 D dalus Fall 2006

his clothes.' The Chevalier created a The tale of the girl raised as a boy is a Many
masks,
brazened-out social fiction that no one story that has been told, and retold, for many
dared to challenge. Even when people many centuries in many cultures, rang selves

noticed that the Chevali?re (as she was ing from the tale of Amba/Shikhandin
now called) shaved; had a beard, a voice, in the ancient Indian Mahabharata to
and a chest like aman ;and urinated the plot of the opera Arabella by Richard

standing up, still they went along with it. Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal.20
One of the players in this drama was It is amyth.

Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais, the au

thor of the play The Marriage of Figaro, JLhemyth of the girl raised as a boy was
in which the page Cherubino (always mistaken for true history not only by
woman
played by a inMozart's opera d'Eon's acquaintances but also by a con
version of the story) is dressed in wom
temporary of his who prided himself on
en's clothing :awoman to his sexual acuity, Giacomo Casanova
pretending
be aman pretending to be awoman. (1725 -1798). In his posthumous mem
Beaumarchais not only thought that oirs, Casanova describes an encounter
d'Eon was awoman but spread the ru with a person named Bellino, who was
mor that he and d'Eon were in love and said to be a castrato and dressed as a
contemplating marriage and, later, that man. This is how Casanova describes his
d'Eon was trying to marry him. Most reaction to Bellino :

significantly, Beaumarchais negotiated The masculine attire did not prevent my

the document in which Louis XVI an
nounced that d'Eon was awoman. But seeing a certain fullness of bosom, which
the true genre of the work of art that put it into my head that despite the billing,
this must be a girl. In this conviction, I
d'Eon made of his life was not opera
made no resistance to the desires which
buffo but myth ;he created amyth of his
he aroused in me.... His the way
birth and an imaginary childhood. The gestures,
he moved his eyes, his gait, his bearing,
story he told was the widespread tale of
his manner, his face, his voice, and above
a whose parents
daughter impoverished all my instinct, which I concluded could
made her dress as a son :
not make me feel its power for a castrato,

[According to d'Eon, his father squan all combined to confirm me inmy idea.21
dered whatever he found in his wife's
Because Casanova desired the castrato,
and the mid-i72o's was in debt
dowry, by
he had to persuade himself that the cas
up to his ears. The way out of debt, it
trato was a girl ;he trusted his groin feel
turned out, was to have a son. [His moth

er's] family will stipulated that a large in ing. Later, however, when Casanova
saw a tell-tale
heritance of some 400 louis would go to thought he bulge in Belli
no's trousers, he became thoroughly
the d'Eon family only if [she] had a son
....
confused. Bellino finally admitted that
born female, the new infant
Although
was to be raised from the start as a
boy....
20 For Amba/Shikhandin, see
Thus according to d'Eon, he was born fe Wendy Doniger,
Splitting theDifference :Gender andMyth inAn
male, but he never knew what itwas like cient Greece and India :The
(Chicago University
to exist as a girl because from the first - -
of Chicago Press, 1999), 271 278, 281 286.
breath his family raised him as a son.19
21 Casanova,
History of My Life, trans. Willard
R. Trask (New York :
Harcourt, Brace & World,
19 Kates, Monsieur d'Eon is a Woman, 47-48. 1966), vol. 6, 2,1.5-6, 15, 16.

D dalus Fall 2006 65

Wendy he was not a castrato
after all; he ex her mother had pretended she was a boy
Doniger the an elaborate sort of in order to keep an inheritance that fol
on plained trick,
identity padding in the groin, and the reason lowed the traditional male line, or (in
for it :he was a girl, but his mother had another version) that her mother had

thought it a
good plan to continue pass told this lie in order to keep her husband
as aman, for she her after she had pro
ing him off hoped she from divorcing
could send him to Rome to sing.22 So duced nothing but girls. And now, Shi
Casanova's instincts were right all argued, "It is far too dangerous, inMao's

along; Bellino really

was a
girl. Or
was China, where men and women are sup
he?Was Bellino telling the truth? posed to be equals, to admit that
one
We can immediately recognize the follows an old, feudal sense of values."25

myth told by the Chevalier (or Cheval And so, even when Shi continued to
i?re) d'Eon and all the others. We may dress as aman, Boursicot thought she
therefore take seriously the possibility was awoman to be aman,
pretending
that Bellino was lying when he said he when in fact she was aman pretending
was a to be a woman to be aman.
girl, taking the old story and pre pretending
tending that it
was the story of his life ; These are spectacular cases, the stuff
that he really was a castrato ;and that, that myth ismade of, but also the stuff
therefore, Casanova was wrong. Bellino that ordinary people make out of myth.
a to be a as their
may have been boy pretending People often triple-cross-dress
to be a castrato. true genders. Men in drag imitate the
girl pretending
In Peking in the 1960s, a popular Chi great sex queens like Mae West, but
nese in his Mae West never wore
opera singer, Shi Peipu, then (who male drag)
twenties, told the same cock-and-bull became, particularly as she a self
aged,
as an imitation of a
story to a gullible young French diplo parody, regarded
mat, Bernard Boursicot, who was sta man imitating her, "the greatest female
tioned there.23 As the New York Times impersonator of all time."26 When

reported it in 1986, "Mr. Boursicot was Gloria Steinern was given in 1973 an
accused of passing information to Chi award from Harvard's Hasty Pudding
na after he fell in love with Mr. Shi, (which specializes in drag shows), she
- women
whom he believed for 20 years to be a remarked, "I don't mind drag
woman."24 Shi, who often wom have been female impersonators for
played
en's roles in operas, dressed offstage in some time." And Marjorie Garber com
as aman, and at first Boursicot ments that transvestism shows us that
public
was aman. Then Shi told "a// women cross-dress as women when
thought Shi
Boursicot that 'she' was born a girl but themselves as artifacts."27
they produce

22 Ibid., 2.1.17-18, 20. 25 JoyceWadler, "The SpyWho Fell in Love

With a Shadow," New York Times Magazine, Au

23 This was the story that inspired David gust 15,1993, 3off.
in 1989
Henry Hwang's play, M. Butterfly,
(New York: Plume [Penguin], 1989) ; seeWen 26
Marjorie Garber, Vice Versa :The
Bisexuality
dy Doniger, The Bedtrick :Tales
of Sex and
Mas
of Everyday Life (New York: Simon & Schuster,
: of Chicago Press, 1995), 150 ; ibid., 52, citing the
querade (Chicago University journalist George
2000), 340-342, 370. Davis.

24 Richard Bernstein, "France Jails 2 in Odd 27 Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests :Cross
Case of Espionage," New York Times, May 11, Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York and
1986, sec. 1, 7. London: Routledge, 1992), 65, 49.

66 D dalus Fall 2006

 It could be and has been argued that that the private self is unmasked, that Many
masks,
every woman since Pandora has mas we are most
genuinely ourselves when
many
as herself, an assumption I do not share.
queraded concealing within alone, selves
a I we are never ourselves
the deceptive superficial image of Rather, think,
woman the true nature of awoman. merely to ourselves but always in rela
A woman who
habitually dressed as a tion to others, even if only imagined
man remarked, "I suppose I could wear others. Like Bishop Berkeley's tree in
dresses, but then I think Iwould just the quad, we exist only when someone
look like aman dressed in drag.... If I sees us.

dress up and put on high heels, or make We become the person we see mir
up, or things like that, they will call me rored in the eyes of others, ideally some
madame. But I'm not going to be a trans one we love or someone who loves us.
vestite to myself." And the woman who The eponymous hero of Woody Allen's
interviewed her and other women who Zelig (1983) becomes black when he is
dressed as men, comments, "One is left with black people, fat when he iswith
wondering whether these women be fat people, and so on, because each in
lieved that average women, in the course dividual calls up a response from that
of their normal lives, look like same aspect inside him.
everyday Zelig does, in
transvestites and prostitutes.... an form, what we all do
Sadly, exaggerated
their view of 'typical females' was taint all the time :
we censor our
language in
"28
ed by misogyny. Or, Iwould say, by a one way when we talk with children,
certain sort of mythology. in another when we more
speak with
formal, older and so forth. But
people,
What do these stories, both historical all of these really are our own ways of
and mythological, tell us? We assume speaking; we simply choose the mask
that masquerades lie, and they often do, that matches the mask of the person
at least on the surface. But
masquerading
we're trying to please. We need an au
as ourselves often reaffirms an enduring dience to play out the self and amask
network of selves inside us, which does to give us that refreshed, vivid sense of
not change even if our masquerades, in self that is inspired by actively playing
tentional or us a role, the frisson of the
helpless, make look dif masquerade.
ferent to others. Erving Goffman Moreover, we project what we
speaks regard
of "the field of public life," wherein our as our best self to the world.
Upward
self must versus a can be a very
public play its part, hypocrisy30 good thing.
where the individu We wear amask because we feel vul
place "backstage,"
al can relax before having to put on the nerable and, paradoxically, want to at
theatrical Goffman assumes tract the one person who will love us as
persona.29
we are without our mask. But this is a
double bind. Instead, I think, we often
28 Holly Devor, Gender Blending :Confronting the fall in love with the people who love,
Limits of Duality (Bloomington :Indiana Univer among our many masks, the mask that
we too love best, feel -
sity Press, 1989), 128,130.
happiest in the
self that we prefer to pretend to be. And
29 Goffman, Behavior in Public Places
Erving our touchstones
York: Free Press, The Presentation may not be human be
(New 1963),
of Self inEveryday Life (Garden City, NY. :Dou
bleday, 1959), Relations inPublic: Microstudies of 30 This isWayne Booth's excellent term ;per
thePublic Order (New York :Basic Books, 1971). sonal communication, June 2002.

D dalus Fall 2006 67

 :
Wendy ings I agree with the bumper sticker Jekyll to Hyde, Communist to anti-Com
Doniger that said, "Iwant to be the person my to whore.
on munist, virgin
identity dog thinks I am." But even the dualistic toggle, if it hap
The bizarre historical that pens more than once, destabilizes the
episodes
embody the myths of self-imitation tell dualistic paradigm, so that Rosalind
us that each of us has several selves, sev one of her selves as Rosalind,
plucks out
eral personae, whether or not we are then another as Rosalind-as-Ganymede,
aware of more than one of them. And and still another as
Rosalind-as-Gany
so when,
failing to be the other person mede-as-Rosalind. The copy of the copy
we we fall back to an infinite regress once we
hoped to change into, produces
our default we may find a dif break out of the simple dualism of sur
position,
ferent form of our many selves awaiting face and depth and acknowledge the
us. We are in our self, but it of each version of the
imprisoned equal authenticity
is very big prison. When we put on a
a text. And some stories reject the ulti
mask we have a choice, like Lon Chaney, mate reality of the mask or of the face
of a thousand faces, and in a sense they beneath it and move on to more com
are all our own.
plex insights.
an attractive young profes We see in them an implicit belief in
Nowadays
sional woman will wear one mask when a
single self that is revealed and con
she wants to attract men
and a very dif cealed in intricate ways, but we also see
ferent one when she applies for a job in glimpses of dual and, occasionally, even
amale-dominated field, not to mention multiple authentic selves. Such stories
the ones that she wears with her chil break open the theme of single identity
dren or with her mother. There are lim to reveal an infinite possibility of varia
its we
: cannot, perhaps, choose to be tions, an infinite regress (mise en ab?me,
or On the or endless
Einstein Marilyn Monroe. displacement) implicit in any
other hand, there are people who believe narrative in which x imitates y while y
we can
only choose to be either Jekyll
or imitates x, and so forth.
- is a little more mock multiple
Hyde but I think there Many films identities,
wiggle
room in there. often through the use of a hall of mir
Some stories begin and end with the rors. Groucho Marx encounters mul

relatively simple assumption that the tiple Grouchos in the famous mirror
mask is false and the face underneath it scene inDuck Soup (1933). There are
real. Never venturing beyond this first multiple Ginger Rogerses in Shall We
level, these stories give us a happy end Dance? (Mark Sandrich, 1937), multi
:
we find the true self, take off the Rita Hayworths in the mirrors in
ing ple
- or not so The Ladyfrom Shanghai (OrsonWelles,
mask, and all ends well well,
as in the case of Oedipus. Others turn 1947), andmultiple (but different) Les
this assumption on its head and argue lie Carons in An American inParis (Vin
that the mask iswhat is true, the face cente Minnelli, 1951), a film in which
underneath it false. In either case, the Oscar Levant (whose 1990 autobiogra
stories that assume amere duality of was entitled Memoirs an Amnesiac)
phy of
- -
selves self versus mask imagine pairs fantasizes that he is the pianist, the con
that are mutual referents of one another, ductor, all the members of the orchestra,
such as two genders or nature/art, na and all the members of the audience, all
The whom are the same. In McTier
ture/culture, yin and yang. polar of John
ized variants are fairly easy to play with : nan's 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown

68 D dalus Fall 2006

 a double of the 1968 later turned out to have the wrong sort Many
Affair (already
Pierce of politics - Paul masks,
version with Steve McQueen), the deconstructionist
many
Brosnan outfoxes the police by hiding de Man, the Indo-Europeanist Georges selves
in plain sight as aman in a bowler hat Dum?zil, the psychologist C. G. Jung.
a -
straight out of Magritte painting A very different problem is posed by
surrounded by hundreds of other men people who suffer from multiple-per
wearing Magritte bowler hats. In Be sonality (or borderline-personality) dis

ingJohnMalkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999), orders, like those of the woman whose
Malkovich (playingMalkovich) goes story was told in The Three Faces of Eve
through the portal that puts him inside (Nunnally Johnson, 1957) or the people
his own mind, and finds himself in a described in the aptly named book Lost
room in which wear
dining everyone is in theMirror'?1 people who have so many
ing his face and saying only "Malkovich selves that they have no abiding sense
Malkovich Malkovich." There are also of self, who feel hollow inside, all mask
multiple doubles of Jack Nicholson in a and no stable self. It is, of course, noto
to draw an objective
theatrical number staged in Somethings riously difficult line
Gotta Give (Nancy Meyers, 2003). between healthy (rather than merely
Since we do have multiple masks, per culturally accepted) and pathological
sonae, selves within us, how foolish we fantasies. But Iwould venture to suggest
are to tell lies in order to preserve the that in the stories of pathological multi
one mask that we think is us and/ the multiplicity is experienced
really ple selves,
or should be as. Many and with that spe
perceived people passively, helplessly,
cling to the old dualistic model of the cial terror that Freud called "the uncan
self and the mask. The fanatical belief ny" (Unheimlich), the feeling that one
that I am (only) the new I, the now I, is lost in the maze of selves. Involuntary
to keep, let alone are also
makes it impossible masks imposed by race and gen
to cherish, so much as a hair of the head der, not to mention the masks our par
of the then I, the old I. As Oliver says ents bequeath to us, often simultaneous
of himself in As You Like It (4.3), '"Twas lymaking us incapable of them.
wearing
I ;but 'tis not 1.1 do not shame to tell contrast, the who
By people actively
you what Iwas, since my conversion so and knowingly accumulate all their for
sweetly tastes, being the thing I am." mer selves, who don't kill off their past
Disdain of the old I is common among selves, believe that all their selves are
the old Communists who became rabid them, even though all selves are not cre
anti-Communists when were dis ated equal. The more cohesive the sense
they
illusioned by Stalin, and also among of perduring personal identity, the more
people who clean up some particularly freedom one feels to choose to don
messy aspect of their lives with such masks and delve into past selves. (This
monomania that they hate their form self-conscious switching of masks has
er partners, the people who knew them the incidental of allowing
advantage you
when. Such people seem to fear that to console
yourself with the memory of
they will turn into pillars of salt if they
31 Richard Lost in theMirror :An
so much as Moskovitz,
glance back at their former Inside Look at Borderline
Personality Disorder
selves. This self-loathing is shared by the
(Dallas: Taylor Publications, 2001). The fore
sort of scholars who renounce
the work, word is by Chris Costner of
Sizemore, author
often extremely un
good work, they did I'm Eve, the source of The Three Faces
of Eve ;
-
der the influence of other scholars who see
Doniger, Splitting the Difference, 79 84.

D dalus Fall 2006 69

 one self when so well
you're not doing
Wendy in the same order, had made
gether again
Doniger in another. When I lived in England I a ship of them, this without doubt, had
on

identity rode to hounds, badly, and taught Indi also been the same numerical ship with
an that which was in the beginning; and so
history, also badly. As I picked myself
up out of the mud in the hunting field, there would have been two ships numeri

watching the others soar over the fence, cally the same, which is absurd.^2
Iwould mutter to myself, "Well, I'd like So the trick is to convert the dualistic
to see some of them translate Sanskrit,"
paradigm into the open-ended, multiple
and among my more erudite Indologist model by decentering the conventions
colleagues I'd think to myself, "Well, of the self, which iswhat masquerading
catch one of them doing a change of legs
does. It reveals a complex subjectivity/
at the canter.")
objectivity that allows paradox to thrive,
The healthy sense of an self
enduring the truth that we both love and hate,
who does not lock the other selves up
both know and do not know.
can be maintained a kind of
by Wittgen There's a natural human to
- a tendency
steinian family resemblance poly search for a real self, a center, but I think
thetic cluster of resembling selves, none out. As we
that's the coward's way go
of which is essential but some combina
deeper and deeper through the alternat
tion of which, a kind of critical mass or
ing layers of masks and faces, we never
minyan, is sufficient to create an endur
reach amonolithic core.
Putting
on a
ing sense of self. Or
one
might see it as a
mask gets us closer to one self and far
kind of Venn diagram made into a Zen
ther from another, and so does taking
: with no sin
diagram intersecting rings off the mask. Since every lie covers up
not an in the cen
gle center, empty ring a truth, a series of masks passes
but no central The through
ter, ring. multiple a series of lies and truths.
Perhaps, then,
forms or layers of the self are all some
the best bet is to wear as many as pos
how alike and all somehow different.
sible, realize that we are wearing them,
and try to find out what each one con
Ahornas Hobbes described this sort of
ceals and reveals. As we strip away
composite self in his famous image of or faces, each time, we see more
masks,
the ship :
in the hall of looking glasses. If we just
When a man is grown from an infant to an stand there with our unconscious masks
on our faces, like egg in the saying, we
old man, though his matter be changed,
he is still the same numerical man ;for never learn anything
about the selves.
yet
that identity, which cannot be attributed once said, "It's abso
Mary McCarthy
to the matter, be ascribed lutely useless to look for [the self], you
ought probably
to the form.... For if, for that won't find it, but it's possible in some
example,
the difference sense to make. I don't mean... a
ship of Theseus, concerning making
mask... but you finally begin... to make
whereof made by continual reparation in
out and to choose the self you want."33 This
taking the old planks and putting in
the new, the sophisters of Athens were
32 Thomas Hobbes, De Coropore, in Sir William
wont to dispute, were, after all the planks
Molesworth, ed., The English Works of Thomas
were changed, the same numerical ship it vol. i (London:
Hobbes, J. Bohn, 1839), 132,136.
were at the beginning; and if some man
had kept the old planks as they were taken 33 Cited as the
frontispiece
to Robert J. Lifton,
The Protean Human Resilience in an Age
out, and by afterwards putting them to Self: of
Fragmentation (New York: Basic Books, 1993).

70 D dalus Fall 2006

nice distinction between self and mask Many
masks,
is hard to call. The stories with the dou
many
ble twist bring us back to the position selves

where we don't seem to have amask,

which iswhere most people think they
are all the time. But the memory of the
double journey out and in, unsettling the
that we are either masked or
assumption
unmasked, reminds us that we are never
unmasked. Theattendant who demon
strates oxygen masks on airplanes before
take-off used to promise, "An attendant
will tell you when it is safe to take off
-
your mask" but no one ever does. For
most of us, it is never really safe, or true,
or possible, to take off the mask. We pre
fer, rather, merely to glimpse the reality
in the mask. We need our masks.
Ifwe always tried to be one single self,
without our masks, the world would

grind to a halt. With them, the world

proceeds from self to self.

D dalus Fall 2006 71