Das Neue ist traditionell

If all societies and, significantly, all the ‘totalitarian institutions,’ in Goffman’s phrase, that seek to produce a new man through a process of ‘deculturation’ and ‘reculturation’ set such store on the seemingly most insignificant details of dress, bearing, physical and verbal manners, the reason is that, treating the body as a memory, they entrust to it in abbreviated and practical, i.e.