lbo-talk-digest V1 #6264

Willy Greenfields filthydirtyunwashed at yahoo.com
Tue Jun 4 14:02:01 PDT 2002



> RE: spiked-politics | Article | All cultures are
> not equal

I again cannot accept that Bauman "confuses modernity (or civilisation) and capitalism, and hence swings between seeing the Holocaust as a possibility of capitalism, and as inherent in civilisation." I read quite a bit of Bauman, though I did so so long ago that I've sort of forgotten where it was he said what. It is very possible that I am attributing thoughts developed in later books to M&H.

If he doesn't repeat it in Modernity and the Holocaust (Bauman often repeats many of his earlier ideas, sometimes verbatim), he lays out his scheme of Legislators and Interpreters in a book of the same name. Modernity, Bauman says, is not at all the same as civilization. It's comparable to a worldview. It's a worldview that disallows ambivalence. My certainly fallible mind does not recall much mention of capitalism.

Malik's article stated that Bauman was, at base, anti-Enlightenment, something that is demonstrably false. True, he later championed ambivalence and had to turn to Levinas, the theoretician of last resort, in his book on Postmodern Ethics. He seemed very uncomfortable doing so, and I can only believe that he did so to defend against the charge of relativism. In his later books, Bauman bemoans the loss of yesterday's standards and identities (or at least their beneficent influence on people) and seeks to recreate them in a progressive fashion. Maybe you can fairly put Bauman in the "we seem to hate ourselves" camp if confining your readings to M&H, but consideration of his later works wouldn't let you do so fairly.

Lately it seems he's become a little too concerned with Lyotard and images of trillions of dollars bouncing around the forex markets instantaneously, but I'm willing to grant an accomplished old man his indulgences.

Below is a link to a highly readable short essay that contains many of his later thoughts.

<http://www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk/working%20papers/bauman.pdf>

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