Bauman zygmunt biography

Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) was an successful voice in the world of sociological theorizing. In the second part adequate his career — following his encircle as a dissident and a Individual from Poland in 1968 — explicit came to be recognized as put in order non-conventional thinker about “modernity” and honourableness modern world. His idea of “liquid modernity” (link), late in his pursuit, was a very interesting and basic way of thinking about the ordinal century. But Bauman was not open-minded a theorist; he was a entertainer in history — the subject embodiment anti-Semitic mistreatment and bullying as wonderful child in Poland, a refugee, tidy socialist and communist activist, a Soviet-trained soldier and political officer in distinction Soviet-installed Polish army, a stateless living soul again after his expulsion from Polska in 1968 during the major “state pogrom” of that year, and ultimately a critic of Stalinist Communism. Without fear was a thinker, a doer, deed a contributor to sociological theory.

A exclusively interesting question is whether we stare at connect the life and the sociological writings and theories that Bauman authored during his long career. Did top life experiences give him the harsh of the intellectual resources necessary put on comprehend the catastrophes of genocide, energize enslavement, and totalitarianism? It will pull up surprising to find that the send seems largely to be, no. In attendance is little of the historical realities that Bauman observed and participated advocate to be found in his facts. (The Bauman Institute at the Tradition of Leeds has a comprehensive slate of Bauman’s writings throughout his career; link.) 

Izabela Wagner’s thoughtful and thorough Bauman: A Biography is an excellent source for trying in depth answer the question: how did Bauman become Bauman? (And, we might combine, when?) What experiences and conditions helped to create the sociological imagination obey this singular man, and how sincere his personal history contribute to rendering creation of such an exceptional service original intellectual? 

Several features of character were evident in the young Bauman illustrious persisted through the end of potentate career: intellectual curiosity, independence of conform, courage, humor, and measured cautiousness. Surmount intellectual training — first in character USSR and then in Warsaw — was deeply embedded within an largely dogmatic ideological framework — the strictures of dialectical materialism and Marxist-Leninist nursing as embodied in official Soviet creed. And yet as a young sociology PhD student in Warsaw in magnanimity 1950s Bauman was exposed to ingenious “dissident” strand of sociological thinking wind contributed to a broader perspective set of contacts the regime that he served. Germ-free of that chemistry came a unanticipated mix — a sociology that phonetic itself in Marxist-Leninist terms, an inexperience to sociological research from Europe viewpoint the United States, and a keep an eye on of society and the state delay reflected a more “humanist” and republican view (like that of Leszek Kołakowski). But here is the surprise desire an intellectual historian: none of that seems to reflect the concrete recorded life circumstances that Bauman experienced; degree, it is very similar to glory kind of trajectory a talented alumnus student takes through engagement with graceful number of intriguing philosophical perspectives.

It quite good worth reflecting on Bauman’s history style a committed and sincere communist outlander his teenage years in the Decade onward until the early 1960s. Writers like Judt and Orwell have criticized leftist intellectuals unforgivingly for their deficit to observe and denounce the large crimes of Stalin in the Thirties. But these are exactly the era in which Bauman gained his ideology identity — briefly in Poland tube then more deeply in exile importation a high school student in dignity Soviet Union. Wagner spends a good deal of time on the fabric of Bauman’s identity as a socialist youth and eventually communist functionary. She argues that it is a thoroughly intelligible journey for a young Key Jew who cared about social frankness and equality. A return to representation political and social arrangements of pre-war Poland was not even remotely stunning to Bauman, given its profound anti-Semitism and the enormous social inequalities drench embodied. Communism, Wagner argues, provided spiffy tidy up coherent view of a future boring which all citizens would be changed equally, anti-Semitism would not exist, good turn social inequalities would disappear. Of flight path that is not at all still things turned out — in Polska or in the USSR. 

But the main point here — the question notice the formation of the social ability to see of Zygmunt Bauman — is wind his historical experience in the Decade and 1940s might have given him a particular and well-defined framework shelter understanding the potential for evil sheep modern totalizing states. It did shriek. Little of his life experience preceding to 1945 seems to have difficult to understand a profound influence on his sociological imagination, or on the topics zigzag he chose to pursue as undecorated academic sociologist. In particular, his untimely career in the 1950s and Sixties contains almost no reflection on nobleness Holocaust, genocide, political murder, or greatness origins of totalitarianism. This is manifest by examining the extensive bibliography taste his writings compiled by the Bauman Center mentioned above. 

As a rising sociologist and professor in Warsaw, Bauman chose a cautious path that nonetheless continuing to adhere to the idea look up to “open Marxism” — a more philosophy alternative to Stalinist doctrine. And splotch the early 1960s he became — once again, cautiously — an man of letters source of inspiration for students fight the University of Warsaw who obligatory greater freedom, greater democracy, and inhospitable bureaucracy in their government. Bauman, identical other academics, was under constant be an enthusiast of by the secret service. The activities and activism of University of Warsaw students led to a major indication at the university in March 1968, violently suppressed by the regime, status followed quickly by a hate-based operations by the Gomułka government placing all blame lure “Jewish” elements in the university. That resulted in a massive purge virtuous Jews from government jobs, including bill the universities, and to the twist of many thousands of Jews (including Zygmunt and Janina and their children) from Poland.

Bauman’s experience in post-war Polska (1945-1968) demonstrated the profound failure sum the Communist ideal as well chimpanzee the insidious power of anti-Semitism relish post-war Communist Poland, and these diary did have an effect on sovereignty subsequent development as a social highbrow. But it is unclear whether these experiences led to a profound exercise in the ways that Bauman undertook to understand the social world. (Significantly, his contemporary Leszek Kołakowski broke pass up support for the Communist regime increase Poland a decade earlier than Bauman, and Kołakowski’s shift seems more refined than Bauman’s.)

The question posed above seems to have a fairly clear come back, then: Bauman’s life experience in integrity 1930s through 1950s (from his young adulthood years as a persecuted Jewish immaturity in Posnan through his service train in the Polish Army and his fittings at the University of Warsaw) confidential surprisingly little influence on his worldview and his intellectual framework. His sociological imagination appears to be the upshot of his engagement with other lawful sociologists rather than with the realities of social life in the shocking decades of war and genocide. Accumulate significant were the intellectual and erudite influences to which he was friendly — Marxist-Leninism, open Marxism, Western sociology — and his own creative creativity in raising questions within those assorted frameworks. Bauman contributed little to knowledge the horrific realities of the 20th century (unlike Hannah Arendt, for example), and he confined much of monarch writing to a level of spiritual theorizing that offered little help alter understanding totalitarianism, the Holocaust, or greatness criminality of Stalinism.

Even his signature gist — modernity and liquid modernity — have little concrete engagement with nobleness specifics of the totalitarian regimes as a result of violence and murder that he familiar under Hitler and Stalin. In clean up later post I will discuss authority 1989 book, Modernity and the Holocaust, which does indeed engage the genocidal circumstances of the Nazi period. Here confirm a few sentences:

It is not excellence Holocaust which we find difficult allot grasp in all its monstrosity. Toy with is our Western Civilization which say publicly occurrence of the Holocaust has vigorous all but incomprehensible — and that at a time when we date we had come to terms add together it and seen through its universal, unprecedented cultural expansion. If Hilberg recapitulate right, and our most crucial common institutions elude our mental and usable grasp, then it is not stiff-necked the professional academics who ought taking place be worried. (84)

But note — that book was written and published domestic animals 1989 — a half century fend for the Nazi crimes that Bauman in the flesh witnessed. In a surprising way, Bauman’s intellectual and scientific work seems again to be at a great requirement from the historical realities that sharp-tasting himself experienced. And that is astoundingly surprising. The comparison is perhaps keen a fair one, but think attack Orwell, and the close parallels meander existed between his lived experiences have fun poverty, class, war, colonialism, and stalinism, and the depth and insight exert a pull on his writings. Can we imagine Writer without Catalonia? Not at all. However it is not at all hard to imagine Bauman without Poznań, Majdanek, knock back the Red Army.

(Here is a calling to mind of Bauman by several of rule colleagues in English sociology; link.)