Jeux De Masques: Postmodern Tribalism

Abstract

1) The individual is closed, self-contained; the person is above all a mask. The nature of the person is that he is polysemantic, polyphonic, as I suggest later on. By way of hypothesis, I propose as the subject of my reflection the constant coming and going that occurs between the growth of mass society and the development of micro-groups aptly called tribes. As this century closes, the fundamental tension characterizing sociality is that the masses, or the people, unlike the proletariat or other classes, do not constitute a group that has been formed through a common concept of identity. Consequently, they are without precise focus and are not the subjects of an ongoing and developing history. The metaphor of the tribe, in itself, permits one to become aware of a process of de-individualization, of a saturation of the function inherent in it, and of an accentuation of the persona, that is, the role that every person is called to play in the self. It is well understood that because the masses are perpetually seething, the tribes that crystallize within them are not stable: the people comprising the tribes are able to move from one tribe to another.1 This continual migration calls for a new framework of analysis. One can understand the shift that is going on and the tension it generates by way of the following diagram.