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353 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 21, 2018
I am suggesting here that PC is a form of communication in which the sign value, that is, the category value of utterances and texts, is considerably more significant than their semantic content. PC identifies political positions rather than propositional content. It bears close resemblance to situations in which shame is a dominant control mechanism and might easily be associated with classical descriptions of witchcraft accusations. The conditions in which PC functions are shaped by institutional arrangements. In fragmented societies, PC is decentralized, anarchic, and ultimately self-destructive. In more centralized societies, it can be quite compact and homogeneous. PC can also occur in response to historical transformations. I have suggested that the decline of modernist identity in the West has led to an increase in narcissism (Friedman 1992), other-directedness, and other-dependency. Narcissists can find themselves only in the eyes of the other. This situation is a condition for the emergence of what some have called tribalism (Maffésoli 1988): the decline of individualism even as, paradoxically, the individual as a person or body gains prominence. Group dependency increases, paradoxically, simultaneously with individualization.