ABSTRACT
When Charles Jedrej suggested that ‘… to describe some institution as a “mask” is as likely to be misleading as informative’ (1980: 229), it was at the end of a paper written to demonstrate and to resolve some of the confusion in our use of this word. It is not that people who use masks are necessarily confused about what they are doing, though they might be, given the complexities of human motivation: this confusion is all ‘ours’ for having taken it upon ourselves to explain what other people are doing. Earlier, in the same paragraph, Jedrej noted that it is ‘… the product of a point of view located in the observer’s European tradition. Only by concentrating on the evidence of what actually happens, rather than on what we think is going on, can we hope for any comprehension.’ I am assuming, of course, that the people who wear masks are, by and large, not the same as the people who write about people wearing masks. I realise that some people would have us believe that all social life is about masks, but this dramaturgical view seems excessive, if not obsessive: I relay some comments to this end in due course.
