Making the Familiar Unfamiliar
Описание книги
Shortly before his death, Zygmunt Bauman spent several days in conversation with the Swiss journalist Peter Haffner. Out of these conversations emerged this book in which Bauman shows himself to be the pre-eminent social thinker for which he became world renowned, a thinker who never shied away from addressing the great issues of our time and always strove to interrogate received wisdom and common sense, to make the familiar unfamiliar. <br /><br />As in Bauman’s work more generally, the personal and the political are interwoven in this book. Bauman’s life, which followed the same trajectory as the social and political upheavals of the 20th century, left its trace on his thought. Bauman describes his upbringing in Poland, military service in the Red Army, working for the Polish Secret Service after the war and expulsion from Poland in 1968, providing personal accounts of the historical events on which he brings his social and political insights to bear. His reflections on history, identity, Jewishness, morality, happiness and love are rooted in his own personal journey through the turbulent events of the 20th century to which he bore witness. <br /><br />These last conversations shed new light on one of the greatest social thinkers of our time, offering a more personal perspective on a man who changed our way of thinking about the modern world.
Оглавление
Zygmunt Bauman. Making the Familiar Unfamiliar
Table of Contents
Guide
Pages
Making the Familiar Unfamiliar. A Conversation with Peter Haffner
Copyright Page
Editorial Note
Preface
Note
Love and Gender Choosing a partner: why we are losing the capacity to love
Experience and Remembrance Fate: how we make the history that makes us
Notes
Jewishness and Ambivalence Adaptation: why were Jews attracted to communism?
Note
Intellect and Commitment Sociology: why it should not separate objective from personal experience
Notes
Power and Identity Modernity: on the compulsion to be no one, or become someone else
Notes
Society and Responsibility Solidarity: why everyone becomes everyone else’s enemy
Notes
Religion and Fundamentalism The end of the world: why it is important to believe in (a non-existent) God
Notes
Utopia and History Time travel: where is ‘the beyond’ today?
Present and Future Human waste: who are the witches of modern society?
Notes
Happiness and Morality The good life: what does it mean to take off shoes that are too tight?
Notes
Select bibliography. Zygmunt Bauman
Janina Bauman
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Отрывок из книги
Zygmunt Bauman
Translated by Daniel Steuer
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The American writer Colette Dowling dubbed women’s fear of independence the ‘Cinderella complex’. She calls the yearning for security, warmth and being-cared-for a ‘dangerous emotion’ and urges her fellow women not to deprive themselves of their freedom. Where do you disagree with this admonition?
Dowling warned against the impulse to care for others and thus to lose the possibility of jumping, at will, on the latest bandwagon. It is typical of the private utopias of the cowboys and cowgirls of the consumer age that they demand an enormous degree of freedom for themselves. They think the world revolves around them, and the performances they aim for are solo acts. They can never get enough of that.
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