“When objects or performances are made into property to be sold, the legal system created by the state defines who has what to sell, and the conditions and terms under which the sale may occur.”
Becker, Art Worlds, p168
Becker is, of course, discussing things he calls art in this short passage but there is something else in this, something goffmanian.
Becker is clearly working in the Symbolic Interactionist tradition (Blumer appears in the bibliography & index of Art Worlds) and the mention of ‘performance’ cannot but evoke Goffman’s work. What is immediately apparent is the ‘social-production’ that this allusion to Goffman suggests. The idea that the ‘performance of the self’ could be ‘made into property to be sold’ is an obvious marxist analysis of ‘bio-capitalism’. Symbolic Interaction, as with Structuralism, may be very old & deeply unfashionable but that does not mean its lessons are invalid. On the contrary it shows us that we still refuse to learn them. ——————
The Think and The Thing 