Special Section: Homage to the Work of Zygmunt Bauman INTIMATIONS of IMMORTALITY John Armitage ygmunt Bauman (born November 19, 1925), the Polish Zsociologist, philosopher, and Cultural Politics editorial board member, who died on January 9, 2017, at the age of ninety- one, was one of the most important cultural and political theorists writing in English over the past fifty years. He had an astonishing span of analysis, which took in everyone and everything from Michel Foucault, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jean Baudrillard to class (1972), culture (1973), socialism (1976), hermeneutics (1978), freedom (1988), and sociology (1990, 2013a). This breadth, combined with a strong and probing crit- ical intellect, constitutes the most exciting thing about reading Bauman. This special section of Cultural Politics, comprising ten short articles, aims to offer a compact and clear homage to the work of Bauman and to remind ourselves why he remains vital to our understanding of contemporary cultural and political studies. If we want to retain a sense of why Bauman continues to be significant and of the influence he has had on cultural politics, we might be well advised to hold in mind simultane- ously two of his many important concepts: ambivalence and postmodernity (see Bauman 1987, 1991, 1992a, 1992b, 1993, 1995, 1997). For many, Bauman remains the world’s foremost advocate of the idea of ambivalence, and his work on post- modernity has been one of the single most influential exam- inations of that cultural and political phenomenon. Anybody working on these two topics will most likely be engaging with the thought of Bauman. 277 Cultural Politics, Volume 13, Issue 3, © 2017 Duke University Press DOI: 10.1215/17432197-4211205 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/cultural-politics/article-pdf/13/3/277/517261/0130277.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 John Armitage Ambivalence is our contemporary or “liquid times”—and the articles by Sean cultural condition based on the ostensible Cubitt and Dennis Smith in this special freedom crowed about today the world section clarify these cultural patterns of over and concerned with our apparent control and identity in more detail. inability either to examine our own cultural In both these crucial areas, Bauman’s pleasures and political seductions or to (2001a, 2001b) work on fundamental alter the coerciveness and control implicit cultural change and political control in in the world in which we live. Bauman’s consumer societies has been centrally and analysis of ambivalence has been enor- persuasively engaged with the subjugation mously influential in numerous fields of of the individual and the production of sub- cultural and political philosophy and has jectivity. Among his most celebrated works had a specific impact in sociology, cultural, are Modernity and Ambivalence (1991), and political studies; fuller definitions and Intimations of Postmodernity (1992a), Post- analyses of the idea of ambivalence can modern Ethics (1993), Life in Fragments: be found in the articles by Douglas Kellner Essays in Postmodern Morality (1995), and Keith Tester. Postmodernity and Its Discontents (1997), Postmodernity, on the other hand, is Work, Consumerism, and the New Poor the concept Bauman often used and (1998a), and Globalization: The Human significantly developed to explain the logic Consequences (1998b), all powerful elab- of the shift from modern to contempo- orations of an ambivalent cultural criticism rary or postmodern culture and society. of the contemporary state of modernity Postmodernity is the sociocultural struc- and morals, labor, unproductive lives, shop- ture or, to Bauman, the contemporary ping, destitution, and innovative studies period of consumption in which a large of postmodern society and its seductions amount of increasingly luxurious goods that set the terms of the contemporary and services are currently being produced, political debates over preferred models distributed, and consumed (Armitage and of human behavior and autonomy, the Roberts 2016). Bauman’s application of the postmodern self, consumption, modernity, language of postmodernity sees seduc- surveillance, and other technologies of tion employed to portray the sociocultural suppression (Bauman 1999, 2004b, 2007; structure of luxurious goods and services Bauman and Lyon 2012; Bauman, Bauman, in the early twenty-first century and Kociatkiewicz, and Kostera 2015). These modernity employed to depict the work two accents of ambivalence and postmo- of ordering and mastering, organizing, dernity in Bauman’s work do not signify 13:3 November 2017 institutionalizing, and managing produced any change in interest. As the articles by • in earlier centuries to expel our dread of Mark Featherstone and Mike Gane demon- disorder and our own demise, even to the strate, Bauman’s searching investigations point of committing monstrous crimes of postmodern paradigms of identity are POLITICS against humanity, such as the Holocaust really only the expansion of his enduring (Bauman 1989; Bauman and Raud 2015a). concern with the ambivalence inherent in Bauman (2000, 2004a, 2006) made a great our once certain beliefs in the purposeful- many attempts to define and redefine ness and the occasional laboriousness of CULTURAL postmodernity more accurately than this— modern reason, ordering, and planning. as the traditional normative discourse of It was not as a theorist of ambiva- 278 modernity in crisis, as “liquid modernity” lence that Bauman first came to fame; his Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/cultural-politics/article-pdf/13/3/277/517261/0130277.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 INTIMATIONS of IMMORTALITY early major works were concerned with Bauman, Zygmunt. 1976. Socialism: The Active Utopia. elites and praxis, with utopia, and with the New York: Holmes and Meier. epistemological problems of the social sci- Bauman, Zygmunt. 1978. Hermeneutics and Social ences. Yet his radical understanding of cul- Science: Approaches to Understanding. London: tural change and political life derived from Hutchinson. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1987. Legislators and Interpreters: and almost always related to an ambivalent On Modernity, Post-modernity, Intellectuals. or liquid viewpoint on postmodern culture Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. and society that was never unbending Bauman, Zygmunt. 1988. Freedom. Philadelphia: Open regarding alternative social systems based University Press. on something other than luxurious con- Bauman, Zygmunt. 1989. Modernity and the Holocaust. sumption, and his appeal is in no way Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. restricted to those who share his cultural Bauman, Zygmunt. 1990. Thinking Sociologically. and political beliefs. In everything Bauman Oxford: Blackwell. (2011, 2013b, 2016, 2017) wrote on sub- Bauman, Zygmunt. 1991. Modernity and Ambivalence. jectivity, on our progressively momentary Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. and loosening sociocultural ties, it is first Bauman, Zygmunt. 1992a. Intimations of Postmodernity. and foremost the range of his work (e.g., New York: Routledge. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1992b. Mortality, Immortality, and new global discourses of inequality Other Life Strategies. Cambridge: Polity. involving high levels of social injury) that Bauman, Zygmunt. 1993. Postmodern Ethics. sparks our interest in the cultural and polit- Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. ical forms of the present period. However, Bauman, Zygmunt. 1995. Life in Fragments: Essays in as the articles by David Lyon and Kevin Postmodern Morality. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Robins reveal, ultimately it is the sup- Bauman, Zygmunt. 1997. Postmodernity and Its pleness of Bauman’s critical approach to Discontents. New York: New York University our growing distrust of strangers, of Press. the freedom of movement, and of the tyr- Bauman, Zygmunt. 1998a. Work, Consumerism, and the anny of the market economy, as much as New Poor. Philadelphia: Open University Press. the astuteness of his (2013b) insights into Bauman, Zygmunt. 1998b. Globalization: The Human surviving postmodern transformation and Consequences. New York: Columbia University Press. separation, obligation, and contemporary Bauman, Zygmunt. 1999. In Search of Politics. community, safety, and anxiety, that has Cambridge: Polity. gained him so extensive an academic and Bauman, Zygmunt. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: public audience and that will continue as Polity. intimations of his immortality. Bauman, Zygmunt. 2001a. The Individualized Society. Cambridge: Polity. References Bauman, Zygmunt. 2001b. Community: Seeking Safety Armitage, John, and Joanne Roberts. 2016. “The Spirit in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity. of Luxury.” Cultural Politics 12 (1): 1–22. Bauman, Zygmunt. 2004a. Identity: Conversations with Bauman, Zygmunt. 1972. Between Class and Elite: Benedetto Vecchi. Cambridge: Polity. POLITICS The Evolution of the British Labor Movement: A Bauman, Zygmunt. 2004b. Wasted Lives: Modernity Sociological Study. Manchester: Manchester and Its Outcasts. Cambridge: Polity. University Press. Bauman, Zygmunt. 2006. Liquid Times: Living in an Age Bauman, Zygmunt. 1973. Culture as Praxis. London: of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity. CULTURAL Routledge and Kegan Paul. Bauman, Zygmunt. 2007. Consuming Life. Cambridge: Polity. 279 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/cultural-politics/article-pdf/13/3/277/517261/0130277.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 John Armitage Bauman, Zygmunt. 2011. Collateral Damage: Social Inequalities in a Global Age. Cambridge: Polity. Bauman, Zygmunt.