Tribes are like the barbarians described by Cavafy—those who come among us and reject discourse that makes one think. With them, the political leader becomes a tribal figure, a figure to be followed on the basis of clear and banal messages, regardless of whether they are authentic or true. It is enough simply to be “against.”

We live in a society that is, in reality, an aggregate of villages where diverse colors and varied customs alternate and blend into a vivid rainbow of fluorescent hues. Today, universal values and shared value hierarchies are in decline: the modern state no longer represents its citizens, and populist leaders who appeal to the passions and inclinations of individuals are welcomed. In short, the new barbarians have arrived. They do not live in a society but in communities, and they wrap themselves in the cloak of their symbols of recognition and self-recognition—such as luxury or tattoos—multiplying like runaway cells: rather than a society, we have become members of a tribe. And these tribes are enclosed within their territories, which their members jealously guard against interference and contamination. Every tribe has its own lifestyle. They have been generated by private circles, by small self-referential communities: they have conquered the caravanserai of the Internet and social media, which welcomes everything and spews everything out.

Tribes are an ancient legacy rooted in the very origins of modernity, from which Elio Franzini takes his starting point to lead us to the debate on the modern and the postmodern, to the present and the politics of corporeality that sustain it.

Federico Vercellone, also drawing on a historical genealogy that spans from the Expressionist avant-garde to the radical left movements, emphasizes the idea that the true risk of our present is not the crisis of the Self and identity but rather its opposite. We are exposed to the inflation produced by a thousand identities that, by insistently asserting themselves, wear down and disintegrate the bond that unites them.