ولكم في الإستهلاك حياة

by Zygmunt Bauman, فاطمة نصر (ترجمة)

The global financial crisis has shattered the illusion that all was well with capitalism and forced us to confront the great challenges we face today with a new sense of urgency. Few are better placed to do this than Zygmunt Bauman, a social thinker whose writings on liquid modernity have pioneered a new way of seeing the world in which we live at the dawn of the 21st Century.

Our liquid modern world is characterized by the transition from a society of producers to a society of consumers, the natural extension of which is the society of perpetual debtors. The ruling idea of the society of consumers is to prevent needs from being satisfied and to create demand; its natural extension is to enable consumers to consume more by borrowing. Debt was transformed into a crucial profit-earning asset of capitalism in liquid modern times. The present-day 'credit crunch' is not the outcome of the banks' failure but rather the fruit of their success in transforming the majority of men and women, young and old, into a race of debtors. They got what they were looking for: a society of debtors whose condition of being in debt was made self-perpetuating, with more debts being offered, and more undertaken, as the only way of escaping from the debts already incurred.

Starting from this reflection on the current global financial crisis and prompted by the probing questions of his interlocutor, Citlali Rovirosa-Madrazo, Bauman examines in an historical perspective some of the most pressing moral and political issues of our time, from international terrorism and the rise of religious and secular fundamentalism to the decline of the nation-state and the threats posed by global warming, issues whose seriousness and urgency attest to the fact that we are living today not only on borrowed money but also on borrowed time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Ebooks

221 pages, Paperback

First published December 30, 2009

About the author

Zygmunt Bauman was a world-renowned Polish sociologist and philosopher, and Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds. He was one of the world's most eminent social theorists, writing on issues as diverse as modernity and the Holocaust, postmodern consumerism and liquid modernity and one of the creators of the concept of “postmodernism”.

Reviews

[Norhan Elturky · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتاب حواري ينقسم إلى قسمين .. القسم الأول سياسي إقتصادي.. و القسم الثاني سياسي إجتماعى .. هذا تقسيم إجتهادي على حد فهمي .. احترت فى تقييم الكتاب ما بين نجمتين و ثلاث .. لكن بعد قراءة القسم الثانى قررت أن أقيمه بثلاثة نجوم .
سعيدة أني قرأت كتاب فتح لي آفاق جديدة من التفكير ، لن أدعي أني فهمت الكتاب كاملًا و لكن فهمته بنسبة 70% .. أن تقرأ حوارًا لفيلسوف تنساب أفكاره بطريقة إرتجالية لهو شئ صعب خاصة مع بعض المصطلحات المبهمة عندى و التى ساعدتنى ويكيبيديا كثيرًا فى فهمها .
القسم الأول من الكتاب عبارة عن أربعة حوارات راقنى الحوار الأول كثيرًا و الذي يتحدث عن أزمة القروض : لفشل البنوك أم ثمرة نجاحها الفائقة ؟
و الجزء الثانى يتكون من أربعة أحاديث أيضًا ، راقنى أغلبها .. الحديث الخامس إنتاج النفايات من البشر و تكاثرها ، الحديث السابع النقش على الدنا ، و الحديث الثامن اليوطوبيا ، الحب أو الجيل المفقود .. أحببت الحديث الثامن جدًا حتى أننى قرأته مرتين .
لا أنصح بهذا الكتاب لمن يريد بدء قراءة أعمال زيجمونت باومان .. و لولا أننى أقتني كتابه الحداثة و الهولوكوست و أعرف من إطلاعى على الكتاب أن أسلوبه و طريقة عرضه للأفكار منظمة .. و استمعت لمناقشة دكتورة هبة رؤوف عزت لأحد كتبه فى مجموعة السوائل .. أعتقد أننى كنت فى الغالب لن أفكر فى القراءة له مجددًا .

[أروى · Rating 2 out of 5]

أمنح الكتاب نجمتين بسبب ضعف الترجمة. الترجمة ليست سيئة، لكنها ليست جيدة أيضا. الكتاب يحوي العديد من النقاط و الأفكار التي تستحق النقاش.

[Michael Palkowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goodreads. This book is one hundred pages longer than you say it is.


PART ONE


First conversation

This is very elucidating and thought provoking. The mediator helps keep the discourse on track and routinely offers his own metaphoric analogies himself including a snake eating it's own head which Bauman is only to willing to appropriate in to an elongated narrative. This section is brilliant in that it discusses the extent to which poverty has became criminalized (anyone with a reading memory will be able to ascribe these to his other books where he discusses paradigmatic weeds) and that extreme poverty is no longer a sign of a structural deficiency or injustice but rather a pathological condition or dysfunction of the poor themselves. He then discusses Luxemburg, her rather poignant stressing that capitalism can only exist or survive in a world where non capitalist or pre capitalist economies linger. This is her "capitalist accumulation" thesis and this provides some interesting deconstruction in how capitalism is essentially a parasitic host today. He discusses the extent to which the state is capitalist in todays society, utilizing his liquid metaphor in stating that whereas before alluding to Habermas that the state is capitalist insofar as it's prime function is the recommodification of capital and labor, the meeting and intermingling of both. In liquid times, the state is capitalist insofar as it assures the continuous availability of credit and the continuous ability of consumers to obtain it. This creates a dualism and merits a large portion of credit consumerist capitalism. He also dispels myths concerning the extent to which states of a capitalist disposition are segregated from the marketplace arguing that it doesn't matter if your state is dictatorial or democratic in a capitalist sense for there is a symbiosis of both in each instance. Incidentally this is elucidated elsewhere by the likes of chomsky, who basically says that free market capitalism doesn't even exist in a tangible reality since state intervention is the modus operandi of all these systems. He also quotes wikipedia in reference to cyronization which is hilarious considering the propaganda students are fed on the dangers of this unmeritable source. He seems to be willing to take different paths and stances in nearly every arena and stand up to assumptions across the board in his interdisciplinary approach to sociology which is willing to quote sources all over the spectrum. He makes a pertinent point concerning the welfare state as well, almost an odious point since he states that the aetiology of such a state was basically to make sure the reserved army of labor, the other work force was cared for in case factory owners required new people. The disintegration of this institution for Bauman shows that capitalisms main source of profit has relocated itself from the exploitation of factory labor to the exploitation of consumers. Thus again introducing the before and after dichotomy that makes him almost disavow marxian thought for a kind of amorphous pessimism. His discussion of the financial crisis is rather thin, for a much more comprehensive account look at David Harvey's work on the subject. However it is elucidating and informative nevertheless with a couple of insightful quotable segmentation

Second Conversation

Discussion turns more in depth to the welfare state, or as Bauman prefers "Social state" (he insists this term is better since it shifts emphasis from the mere distribution of material benefits to a more cohesive understanding of a motive and purpose for their provision). This is presented utilizing a variety of golden oldies from Bauman's work including flawed consumers and the vestiges of Benham's panopticon in the institutions policing poverty and the poor. This happens because as we move from fordist industry and territorial conquest, the poor are no longer viewed as reserved armies for industry or the army, so maintaining the good health of them becomes a perpetual liability rather than an asset or investment. He discusses the apparent contradiction in a social states advocation for both freedom and security, quoting Freud. He states that the liberal idea of freedom becomes untenable and unrealizable, or in his words an elusive phantom idle dream, unless the fear of defeat is mitigated by a collectivized insurance policy, undertaken by the community at large. He critiques privatization insisting that it puts the task of fighting and resolving socially produced problems onto the shoulders of individuals, of whom he regards as being too weak to cope with such responsibility. He insists that freedom and security need to exist in a harmonious bubble of sorts and that the social state does this. I am sympathetic to his political positions of course and this seems to be his penultimate defense of social stateism. However if you consider his politics from yesteryears you realize that he has mellowed, become a soft octogenarian welfare conservative almost in contrast. Nevertheless this is the utopia outlined and is immediately contrasted with reality, how the collectivized 'we' are going in the opposite direction into what he calls the "absent" society, reminiscent of similar theoretical frameworks of "ghost society" and ephemeral champaign socialism. Incidentally he quotes Adorno in stating the impossibility of truly representative abstractual frameworks in that they are immediately utopian in nature and not wholly constitutive of the reality they seek to portray, So Bauman is modest in his attempts here and doesn't seek a meta-narrative of the entirety of our problems but rather a thought pattern which may begin to understand the schizophrenic nature of the ills we are all consuming and experiencing. Individuals are increasingly weighed down by more pressures as the state ruptures and disintegrates (in what he calls a process of subsidiarity). To quote his other work, "nobody is in control anymore" and this is part of the complex matrix of contemporary fear. This also means a disentangling of societal bonds, (this is delineated in his book Liquid love and others) since individuals increasingly become what Kant called instrumental. This is happening under the auspices of monopolized wealth as Bauman quotes the severity in statistics which are basically uncontroversial. The public are increasingly engaged in a networked gaze which proliferates uncertainty and undermines, parallelizing the population. This is because we are more than ever before measuring our life style and acumen with the imagined "other", the celebrity plays this role, of the untenable, unreachable consumerist blueprint.

Third Conversation

Here Bauman begins discussing "Epistemological transgression", or the palpable nature of ultimate demise. He states at the beginning that the 'real collapse of pretty much everything is not here yet' but yet still renders the possibility for the apocalypse through whatever instantiated formation that is accepted. He begins on a rather tedious, though short analysis of Houellebecq attempting to sieve and compare his cloning story and protagonists into the realm of real. This will be a delight for Bauman scholars who write extensively on antigone and various mythological allusions and how they fit within the context of his work. I don't really care for this much and didn't particularly enjoy segments of Wasted Lives for that reason. He begins discussing Utopia and its persistence. Zizek does this remarkably in his book "In defense of lost causes" and so readers of this book should check out the narratives which emerge within the context of that book. Conversation swiftly turns thankfully to the labour party and the concept of democracy. What Madrazo doesn't seem to realize in his question is that democracy is a rather loaded and conflated piece of political terminology which can have radically adjacent and oppositional definitions in different contexts. Chomsky delineates this well in suggesting that the popular model of westernized democracy is basically contrary to the basic denotation which is widely accepted and understood by millions. What the Zapatistias are doing is not reinventing democracy or disavowing but rather reclaiming and re appropriating the context to the standard definition. It is hardly therefore a "postmodern revolution" if you realize what actually happened. It was in my opinion strictly conservative in this reclaiming of direct democratic institutional frameworks, an anarcho style system where everyone has a say, free press and decentralized power structures. This is basically uncontroversial. In Bauman's response he makes some good points. Firstly the third way centrist pandering of Schroder et al essentially became a self fulfilling prophecy since while it was fairly easy to discern left and right economic policy prior to his own sentiment that economic policy doesn't have a left or right dimension, merely a good or bad one, afterwards an increasing number of social democratic governments in Europe presided over privatization, deregulation and individuation.(It was the French socialist party that disintegrated much of the social state) Therefore there is little if any tangible difference between the parties of left and parties of right in economic positions since they largely occupy the same sort of agenda which was espoused by third way politics a decade before. This shift in policy is interesting particularly in light of post communist parties adopting policies which benefit the rich and disavow the poor. Nation states are no longer as powerful as they once were is a common explanatory maxim and it does hold some meritable truth particularly in the context of Bauman's response (Check out his book on Globalization to get a much deeper ingratiation of the complex factors involved in this). There has been an evaporation from the state to the global space which has engendered a divorce of politics and power. This has profound consequences for the idea of a social state and thus the only tangible leftist agenda which is universally palpable and accepted by many. If the nation state no longer is able to muster the same powers as it once did, we would (we as in socialists) would occupy a government of diminished, reduced capacity fighting the extraterritorial forces of the market, power in all its manifestations external to the political frame and economic forces of varying realities. This means that socialism in the current parameter, the current disposition of world relations basically has an uphill battle since its theory relied on the power of a centralized nation state which has largely subsided according to Bauman. This led to numerous articles incidentally in New Statesman recently around the announcement by Ed Balls that a labour government wouldn't reverse any of the cuts imposed by the coalition, where some writers attempted to state that we can still be revolutionary, reactionary but still accept austerity measures. I am not in the slightest convinced by this at all. I would claim that we need a reinvention of socialist praxis rather than a pandering to the right wing individuation which seems to prescribe unconsciously the idea of a non-society. Bauman seems to adopt a similar position, although i am not totally convinced as his response seems faintly nebulous and undefined. I suppose his endorsement of Adorno earlier prescribed that he would only begin to begin so to speak and so I cannot critique him for not providing prospective answers to something which is distinctly unanswerable.

He goes on to discuss democracy in the vein of Madrazo's question, asking if the democratic paradigm truly results in the most sustainable, happy, prosperous "good" society. He doesn't specify what democratic definition he is using however and so again one must assume he is using the standard one of a institution which is decentralized and allows people direct means of control over political affairs through whatever medium that is- ballet box and so on. I assume this because he quotes Henry Giroux who basically makes similar points. He seems to accept the thesis that the Zapitasta are weary of adopting democracy, a close look at the way the micro society is organized tells a different story of course. He rightly begins to delineate the term itself and states is freedom, equality and cooperation a mere epiphenominal result of democratic institutions? It's a good question that again requites substantial framing to truly respond in a definitive way.

"are democratic structures of governance
similar to vending machines, only giving out what was put inside
them in the first place?" (58)

This then secretes rather nicely into a discussion concerning ethnonationalism, or "constitutional patriotism". This results in Bauman's notion of double bind, (I am sure he has used this before in other contexts) whereby governments are entangled in a conflict of global and locality. Attention turns to the idea of solidified states and democracy going hand in hand. Is a state necessary for democracy in other words. I found this segment rather dull since it seemed like borderline predilection just to be provocative. It's obvious that democracy as a core tenant is largely antithetical to state infrastructure anyways. It is also arguable that states which have extreme solidification result merely in totalitarian dictatorships and the example Madrazo cited in his question is strange since the study only looked at Latin American countries, places where in some cases, democracy is withheld due to embargoes and economic terrorism from other "democratized" western powers! Bauman basically demolishes this point in a couple of sentences using different examples and means stating that the suggestion is basically putting the cart before the horse. What results is a long section on business, which didn't seem to truly be merited in light of the question.

The next question again is focused on state power, big brother is not fluvial is the central assumption and quotable section of the question, I would argue that his own metaphoric instantiation of it reaching its tentacles out into many places seems to disprove his own idea there since it's clear that the tentacles reach out and become amorphous, you can't tell one from the other and slowly there is a field of tentacles. Not only that but accountability would diminish into collateral damage from this and thus we would have a system of ultimate aqueous terror. Bauman however doesn't take this route and instead is keen on differentiating how our world is different now and how the coordinates are no longer comparable to a previous epoch. He delineates the central thesis of his book Wasted Lives (2004) which concerns the notion of "Human waste", the paradigmatic weeds of a society, the underclass and the unemployable fodder. This thesis is sutured together with the claims made in Liquid Fear(2005). Migrants are a really good instantiated representation of modern fear today and it usually goes hand in hand with itinerants or underclass fodder. He makes a case of course for the ambivalence of society (again expanded at length in his work Modernity and ambivalence)

"In the time of globalization it is the way resentment is directed
towards migrants that particularly catches the eye and the imagination,
and so is politically prohtable. In some perverse way,
migrants represent everything that breeds anxiety and stirs up
horror in the new variety of uncertainty and insecurity that has
been and continues to be prompted by the mysterious, impenetrable
and unpredictable ‘global forces’" (66)

Politics today is almost a game of who is toughest on the paradigmatic weeds of society. Freedom is thus at risk under a "fatigue" of this sort of posturing, this rhetorical distunciation of us vs them which becomes a large field of weeds subsuming us. He begins to incorporate this in relation to holding prisoners without trial in Guantanamo and how this has largely went without much protest, the odd murmur of liberal dissent here and there but hardly anything meriting a public outcry at the abuses. In a liquid modern world, security is the aim of the game. We then change the topic slightly to sovereignty and Madrazo asks a brilliant question delineating how the sovereign is no longer found in governmental, divine supremacy, people, constitution, law (dictates of reason) the power to create and abolish laws, individuals or the female body but rather quoting Bauman himself in consuming life, the marketplace.



PART TWO


Conversation Four

The conversation turns to the Holocaust and ethnic cleaning more generally, with genocides worldwide. Bauman's thesis in "modernity and the Holocaust" from 1989 essentially to be over simplistic was that this act of true terror would not have been possible without the bureaucratic, over rationalization of modernity itself. That modernity provided the coordinates for such an act. He basically delineated how this phase is marked by gardeners out to trim and make perfect societies and perfect worlds. The phase of pre capitalist, hunter gatherer societies was marked by game-keeping. The world was created for us, so why tamper with it. The current paradigm is that of hunters, of tourists and we in this mode are consumers, always on the move and consuming things. I have to disagree with the question asked though, in that he states that the definition of genocide is consistently evolving.

"as Schabas points out, the definition and scope
of genocide is continually evolving" (100)

It's not. A genocide is a genocide, there is no need to render this debate meaningless with postmodernist jargon and incomprehension otherwise we run the risk of not being harsh enough and being ruthlessly critical of anything which even remotely resembles this being planned or enacted. We cannot have a nebulous denotation of what constitutes genocide. Bauman makes a great point in stating that

"the killing of thousands or
hundreds of thousands of people for the sin of belonging to a
Wrong kind of people, or happening to be present in the Wrong
place at the wrong time, were not inventions of twentieth-century
totalitarianisms either. (101)

What made these totalitarian crimes unique was the grand design factor, the idealization of some sort of utopian society which did not have within it's creation certain races or types of people, those who did not fit within the established demarcated idealized world set out by the dictator. He then delineates his garden metaphor which i alluded to earlier and the totalities this involves. He makes a great addition to the metaphor though.

"In making a garden, the destruction of weeds is an act of creation.
It is the uprooting, poisoning or burning of the weeds that transforms
the wilderness into order and harmony." (101)

In creating grand designs, the paradigmatic weeds are conspicuous by their absence. Totalitarians often pretended the final utopia without mention of the etiological process which constituted the framework of the kingdom. Bauman then goes on to discuss colonization and remarks the following:

"The times of imperialism and colonialism, and other, though
intimately connected, manifestations of the same philosophy of
power and domination, are now by and large over." (103)

His point is that countries prefer to operate domination at a distance. Which is contestable if facts are considered or if anyone is willing to engage in the militaristic might and multifarious war crimes delineated by historians trying to decipher what happened now only a couple of years back. Countries do both, it's an intermingling array of domination where aid money can be a political tool etc. This however was common in the colonial era too.

[Derya Ekin · Rating 2 out of 5]

kredi sıkışmasıyla ilgili olan ilk bölümü ve nüfusla ilgili olan 5. bölümü sevdim

Diğer sohbetler devlet, modernite, dünya geleceği etrafında dönüyor. Genel okuyucu için okuması ve anlaması zor. Konulara ilgili olmanız ya da terminolojiye hakim olmanız gerekiyor.

soru cevap çeklinde ilerlediği için Bauman'ın fikirlerini de diğer kitaplarına yaptığı atıflarla daha net anlayabiliyorsunuz. O nedenle Bauman'ı genel anlamda tanımak için iyi bir kitap olabilir

[José Marcio da Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obra de folego que versa sobre diferentes aspectos e problemas da sociedade atual.
Altamente recomendado.

[Mikołaj · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ciekawe, ale wszystko już gdzieś czytałem.

[Wm R Holzhueter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm breathing a sigh of relief after the last few of Bauman's books. I don't know if it is that I am not mature enough (either intellectually or in reading ZB) to get his last 4 or 5 books or that since the wonderful Ms. Rovirosa has helped facilitate the work and keep ZB on track... but whatever it is, I like it.

He moves all across the board in terms of capital, labor, religion, sexuality and one of my favorite sections: the future of genetics and the philosophical entanglements.

It really was the best thing I have read for him in a long time

As far as I know this is the first publication by ZB since the recession started in Fall of '08 and he has a lot to say about it with his usual poignant case-in-points, extendable metaphors or quick and sharp analyses.

They were supposed to make a documentary about him - How to Survive Death - but I never heard anymore of it after a few years ago. Anyways, this is definitely on par with his other great late 80's - late 90's and his "conversations" with Tester.

[Marco · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book focuses, in the form of interview, some of the most important Baumann's concepts on the reality of the contemporary world. The ideas presented are very interesting, even if the language used is not readily understandable. Personally, I often had to stop, check the dictionary, re-read some passages to understand what the sociologist meant. Baumann often, addressing an argument, opens others ones: ok everyone very interesting but sometimes it seems to follow a fractal and you feel the sensation to have lost the original theme. Read in the italian translation.

[Richard Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a nice overview of Bauman's work, particularly for those who are not too familiar with it. In some parts, however, Bauman, as is his style, becomes particularly wordy, which makes the book a slow read. He also does not spend as much time discussing the financial crisis as I would have liked. But, his discussion of science and epistemology is quite rich and clear.

[aramazsansormaz · Rating 2 out of 5]

1. Bölüm kredi sıkışması kısmı etkileyiciydi.

Diğer sohbetler devlet, egemen güç, dünya sistemi etrafında dönüyor. Siyaset bilimiyle ilgilenenler için ilgi çekici olabilir fakat genel okuyucu için teknik meseleler olarak kaldılar.

Kitap Bauman'ın ıskarta hayatlar, kimlik kitaplarına epey gönderme içeriyor.

[Francesca Giorgetti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, not an easy read.

[Przemysław Skoczyński · Rating 4 out of 5]

W czasach spełniających się antyutopii, czytanie mistrzów nauk społecznych jest jak kubeł zimnej wody. Błyskotliwa, choć bardzo gorzka pozycja.