Zygmunt Bauman’s work has always been defined by intellectual courage and audacity. Whether he was writing about the sociology of knowledge in 1960s or about consumption in the 1990s, he always related his analysis to the great themes of social thought: emancipation and alienation, autonomy and domination, identity and otherness. The importance of his books came from his ability to combine sensitivity and focus on concrete things with a talent for building big narratives about freedom, modernity and hopes for gaining control over reality. When one adds to that his lucid and beautiful language, it’s easy to understand why not only was he a renowned academic but also a popular writer to whom people turned for explanation of how their individual problems connect with collective fate.
For me, three things settle the issue of Bauman’s uniqueness in contemporary thought. First, it’s his reflection upon the unintended consequences of social projects. Second, it’s his analysis of postmodernity as a system of exclusions and third, his attempt at founding an ethics of “nonavoidance”. [...]
Although the author of “Legislators and Interpreters” had the label of a postmodern thinker and many thought of his work as affirming modernity as a fulfilled utopia of individualist choice, similar to that found in the work of Anthony Giddens, one has to remember that Bauman was a consistent critic of postmodernity. He noticed that the basic mechanism of reproduction in contemporary societies is consumption and seduction, and not ideology and sanctions, but that at the same time the system produces social exclusion and domination. The homeless, the poor, the “flawed consumers”, the refugees, the illegal migrants. Bauman gave a place in public debate to the outcasts of postmodern times, the people uprooted from their communities by global capitalism and pestered people’s conscience by showing them that their individual welfare has its dark side and a price paid by other people.
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