Tearing at the Seams: Tribalism in Postmodern America

If you ask average Americans what they most like about their country, they might well tell you ‘Diversity’. If you ask them what they find most frustrating about America, they will likely tell you ‘Divisiveness’. What is great about America is also its great weakness. What brings us together also rips us apart.

This predicament has rendered what Dostoyevsky called ‘Nadryvy’ or ‘Strained conditions about to break’. A suite of translations serve to fully characterize our age: ‘Ruptures’, ‘Strains’, ‘Torments’, ‘Crises’, ‘Crack-Ups’, ‘Lacerations’. We see it in the way media personalities rant for hours, the widespread protests and riots throughout American cities, and the unabashed viciousness of social media debates. In our age of Nadryvy, we have seen community transform into tribalism, which has brought us to the brink of civil war. 

In this collection of essays, first published from 2015 through 2020, Eric Robert Morse explores life and society in this convulsive time. With his signature trenchancy and incisive wit, he cycles through wide-ranging themes that include Postmodernism and Critical Theory, Identity Psychology and Sociality, Diversity and Divisiveness, Fake News and Relativism, Logic and Debate, and Rights and Tyranny. Altogether, this volume serves an astonishing chronicle of the times which defies status-quo discord in favor of levelheaded dialectic.