Personality versus Persona: The Lived and the Fabricated in the Economy of Artistic Being
Personality versus Persona: The Lived and the Fabricated in the Economy of Artistic Being In the quiet interstices between self and appearance lies a distinction as old as philosophical anthropology and as urgent as the contemporary condition of mediated existence: the difference between personality and persona. A personality is lived; a persona is constructed. The former is the slow sedimentation of experience, disposition, temperament, and ethical orientation into a coherent, if never fully transparent, mode of being-in-the-world. The latter is an intentional artifact—an image assembled for recognition, circulation, and effect. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with cultivating an image. The danger arises when the labor of fabrication begins to exceed, and eventually displace, the labor of formation: when more energy is expended in the maintenance of the mask than in the development of the face that wears it, or, more precisely, in the artist and the work itself. This is not a mor...
