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Postmodernity and Its Discontents
If, as Freud postulated, modern society assails man's freedom by repressing his sexual expression, then the postmodern era can be said to be defined by the individual's quest for sublime happiness at the expense of security. Society has held to the concepts of beauty, purity, and order for centuries, and now a new worldview has emerged with the individual at its nucleus.
Framed by discussions of such thinkers as Michel Foucault, Emannuel Levinas, Hans Jones and Richard Rorty, Postmodernity and Its Discontents explores this brave new era, tackling head-on such issues as the postmodernization of surveillance and social control; the often tenuous threads binding morality, ethics, and freedom together; contemporary artistic and aesthetic theory; and the complex associations between solidarity, difference and freedom.
Arguing that you need most what you lack most, internationally renowned scholar Zygmunt Bauman asserts that freedom without security assures no greater happiness than security without freedom. In this thoughtful, nuanced volume, Bauman searches for a balance between the two, tipping the scales of the postmodern world decidedly in our favor.
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First published February 1, 1997
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About the author
Zygmunt Bauman
286 books2,384 followersZygmunt 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”.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 18, 2014
This is an utterly fascinating book. I’m not really going to cover the half of it – not even in the quotes I will try to append – the problem is that there is so much to this book that I’m only going to try to focus on the bits I am going to try to make use of in my thesis eventually. And those bits mostly focus on Bauman’s idea of the local and the stranger – of the tourist and vagabond.
So, Marx said that one of the things Capitalism did to ensure lower wages was to create a reserve army of the unemployed. The point of this reserve army – over and above forcing down wages, was that it would literally be standing in reserve, that there would come a time when this army (or members from that army) would need to be deployed. The scientific and technological revolution has diminished the need for such a reserve army. In fact, unemployment today is much more ‘structural’ than ‘temporary’ – even by Capitalism’s standards. Many of the people the unemployed will never get work, certainly never get ‘life time’ work or anything approaching the kinds of security that would allow them lives that might define them as ‘fully human’.
Communism and fascism were thoroughly modern ideologies. Basically, they were concerned with cleanliness. There were two things you could do with ‘the stranger’ – someone dirty in the sense of being ‘out of place’ – you can either eat them (and therefore incorporate them into your body – assimilation) or you can vomit them out of your society altogether. The Nazi death camps and Soviet show trails were examples of the latter strategy. Purity or race or of class were the long-term aims.
But postmodern society has different notions of cleanliness. Quite odd and contradictory things are occurring in our late-modern world. For some (well, the rich) there essentially is no such thing as the nation state. They move about the world at will and consider themselves to be citizens of that world. In this sense they are like commodities and money – the whole of the system is outraged if any restriction is placed on their free movement. So, we have things like the North American Free Trade Agreement at precisely the same time as huge fences are being erected to keep Mexicans out of the US. “Give me your shiny, shine stuff – you can keep your poor, huddled masses.” Nation states only exist for the poor.
And the poor are different now – no longer a reserve army, they are the failed consumers and therefore failed citizens and human beings. Where we once needed to look after these people because they would one day be needed, there is no chance they will ever be needed now. They are dirt in all senses – and so they are to blame for their own situations. This is why we live in a post-welfare state – we just can’t afford these people any more. Or, we can afford them – we can afford to put them in prisons rather than houses or schools – we need to be protected from them. They are dirt – no, worse, they are slime, because slime sticks to your hands and doesn’t let go. They must be vomited out – they were given their chance to assimilate and they failed. For our own protection we need to forcibly remove them, force them into ghettoes, build fences to keep them out, they are the criminals and the insane, lazy and selfish.
And in a parody of the dialectical idea of an identity of opposites, Bauman talks about how those at the top of the order have become essentially tourists – interested, but basically disinterested too in the societies they encounter from their safe and forever welcomed locations no matter where they go. He compares this experience with that of the vagabond, the enforced tourist – always having to move (or move on, rather) and of never being welcomed.
Watching how Australia is currently treating its asylum seekers – the agonies this is costing me because I find it nearly impossible to believe Australia is so lacking in any semblance of compassion – this is a book I would force on our leaders. Except, of course, they are beyond whatever help might come from such a book. But perhaps you aren’t – worth reading this to find out.
Some quotes:
Sixty-five years after Civilization and its Discontents was written and published, individual freedom rules supreme; it is the value by which all other values came to be evaluated, and the benchmark against which the wisdom of all supra-individual rules and resolutions are to be measured. Page 12
‘The German Final Solution’, observed the American writer Cynthia Ozick, ‘was an aesthetic solution; it was a job of editing, it was the artist’s finger removing a smudge; it simply annihilated what was considered not harmonious.’ Page 17
Purity is an ideal; a vision of the condition which needs yet to be created, or such as needs to be diligently protected against the genuine or imagined odds. Page 18
To conclude, if uncleanliness is matter out of place, we must approach it through order. Uncleanliness or dirt is that which must not be included if a pattern is to be maintained. Page 21
This is what ‘the locals’ (who, to be sure, could think of themselves as ‘locals’ and constitute themselves into ‘locals’ only in as far as they opposed themselves to the ‘strangers’ – that is, to some other people who were not ‘locals’) did, let me repeat, at all times and places. Page 26
Strangers are no longer routine, and thus the routine ways of keeping things pure do not suffice. Page 28
Modern utopias differed in many of their detailed prescriptions, but they all agreed that the ‘perfect world’ would be one remaining forever identical with itself, a world in which the wisdom learnt today will remain wise tomorrow and the day after tomorrow Page 28
The world depicted in the utopias was also, expectedly, a transparent world – one in which nothing dark or impenetrable stood in the way of the eye; a world with nothing spoiling the harmony; nothing ‘out of place’; a world without ‘dirt’; a world without strangers. Pages 28-9
Nazism and communism excelled in pushing the totalitarian tendency to its radical extreme – the first by condensing the complexity of the ‘purity’ problem in its modern form into that of the purity of race, the second into that of the purity of class. Page 29
In the postmodern world of freely competing styles and life patterns there is still one stern test of purity which whoever applies for admission is required to pass: one needs to be capable of being seduced by the infinite possibility and constant renewal promoted by the consumer market, of rejoicing in the chance of putting on and taking off identities, of spending one’s life in the never ending chase after ever more intense sensations and even more exhilarating experience. Not everybody can pass that test. Those who do not are the ‘dirt’ of postmodern purity. Page 32
That every order tends to criminalize resistance to itself and outlaw its assumed or genuine enemies is evident to the point of triviality. Page 35
The pursuit of modern purity expressed itself daily in punitive action against dangerous classes; the pursuit of postmodern purity expresses itself daily in punitive action against the residents of mean streets and no-go urban areas, vagabonds and layabouts. Page 36
All societies produce strangers; but each kind of society produces its own kind of strangers, and produces them in its own inimitable way. Page 39
At some point of our century it became common knowledge that men in uniforms are to be feared most. Page 40
In this war (to borrow Lévi-Strauss’s concepts) two alternative, but also complementary strategies were intermittently deployed. One was anthropophagic: annihilating the strangers by devouring them and then metabolically transforming into a tissue indistinguishable from one’s own. This was the strategy of assimilation Page 41
The other strategy was anthropoemic: vomiting the strangers, banishing them from the limits of the orderly world and barring them from all communication with those inside. This was the strategy of exclusion Page 41
In the modern society and under the aegis of the modern state, cultural and/or physical annihilation of strangers and of the strange was a creative destruction Page 42
The strangers were, by definition, an anomaly to be rectified. Their presence was defined a priori as temporary, much as the current/fleeting stage in the prehistory of the order yet to come. Page 43
By cautious and, if anything, conservative calculations, rich Europe counts among its citizens about three million homeless, twenty million evicted from the labour market, thirty million living below the poverty line. The switch from the project of community as the guardian of the universal right to decent and dignified life, to the promotion of the market as the sufficient guarantee of the universal chance of self-enrichment, deepens further the suffering of the new poor Page 49
In their present rendering, human rights do not entail the acquisition of the right to a job, however well performed, or – more generally – the right to care and consideration for the sake of past merits. Page 49
Betting is now the rule where certainty was once sought, while taking risks replaces the stubborn pursuit of goals. And thus there is little in the world which one could consider solid and reliable Page 51
As we have seen, it is the widespread characteristic of contemporary men and women in our type of society that they live perpetually with the ‘identity problem’ unsolved. Page 53
The slimy, says Sartre, is docile – or so it seems to be. Page 54
For some residents of the modern city, secure in their burglar-proof homes in leafy suburbs … the ‘stranger’ is as pleasurable as the surfing beach, and not at all slimy. The strangers run restaurants promising unusual, exciting experiences to the taste-buds. Page 57
The sliminess of strangers, let us repeat, is the reflection of their own powerlessness. It is their own lack of power that crystallizes in their eyes as the awesome might of the strangers. The weak meet and confront the weak; but both feel like Davids fighting Goliaths. Each is ‘slimy’ to the other; but each fights the sliminess of the other in the name of the purity of its own. Page 59
In 1981, 2.9 million criminal offences were recorded in England and Wales. In 1993, 5.5 million. In the last three years, the prison population has risen from 40,606 to 51,243. Between 1971 and 1993, public expenditure on the police rose from £2.8 billion to £7.7 billion. From 1984 to 1994, the number of practising solicitors went up from 44,837 to 63,628, and of practising barristers from 5,203 to 8,093. Page 70
Jobs for life are no more. As a matter of fact jobs as such, as we once understood them, are no more. Page 72
The Welfare State had to reach where industry did not; it had to bear the marginal costs of capital’s race for profit, to make the left-behind labour employable again – an effort which capital itself would not or could not undertake. Page 73
This new perspective is expressed in the fashionable phrase: ‘Welfare State? We can no longer afford it’ ... Page 73
Every type of social order produces some visions of the dangers which threaten its identity. Page 74
The society which obtains order-stabilizing behavioural patterns from its members who have been evicted or are about to be evicted from their statuses as producers and defined instead as, first and foremost, consumers. Page 77
Unlike production, consumption is a thoroughly individual activity: it also sets individuals at cross purposes, often at each other’s throats. Page 77
…there are no standards except those of grabbing more, and no rules, except the imperative of ‘playing one’s cards right’. Page 79
Given the nature of the game now played, the hardships and misery of those left out of it, once treated as a collectively caused blight which needs to be dealt with by collective means, can be only redefined as an individual crime. The ‘dangerous classes’ are thus redefined as classes of criminals. And so the prisons now fully and truly deputize for the fading welfare institutions. Pages 80-1
Nowhere is the connection exposed more fully than in the United States, where the unqualified rule of the consumer market reached, in the years of Reaganite free-for-all, further than in any other country. The years of deregulation and dismantling of the welfare provisions were also the years of rising criminality, of a growing police force and prison population. Page 82
As Linebaugh suggests, the spectacle of execution is ‘cynically used by politicians to terrorize a growing underclass’. But in demanding the terrorization of the underclass, the silent American majority attempts to terrorize its own inner terrors ... Page 83
These few facts signal the new casting of the poor in its new version of the ‘underclass’, or the ‘class beyond the classes’: no longer is it the ‘reserve army of labour’, but fully and truly the ‘redundant population’. What is it good for? For the supply of spare parts to repair other human bodies? Page 84
Increasingly, being poor is seen as crime; becoming poor, as the product of criminal predispositions or intentions – abuse of alcohol, gambling, drugs, truancy and vagabondage. The poor, far from meriting care and assistance, deserve hate and condemnation – as the very incarnation of sin. Page 84
Kant’s trust in the grip of ethical law rested on the conviction that there are arguments of reason which every reasonable person, being a reasonable person, must accept; the passage from ethical law to ethical action led through rational thought. Page 103
Kant’s categorical imperative (that is, no principle which cannot be violated without violating simultaneously the logical law of contradiction). Page 103
The poor of today are no longer the ‘exploited people’ producing the surplus product later to be transformed into capital; nor are they the ‘reserve army of labour’, expected to be reintegrated into that capital-producing process at the next economic upturn. Economically speaking (and today also politically elected governments speak in the language of economy), they are fully and truly redundant, useless, disposable and there is no ‘rational reason’ for their continuing presence ... Page 111
These results are sought through the two-pronged strategy of the criminalization of poverty and the brutalization of the poor. Page 111
The ‘problem’ of the poor is recast as the question of law and order, and social funds once earmarked for the rehabilitation of people temporarily out of work (in economic terms, the recommodification of labour) are pumped over into the construction and technological updating of prisons and other punitive/surveillance outfits. Page 112
Under such conditions, one would expect a widespread feeling of injustice, with the potential to condense into a mass protest movement, if not an open rebellion against the system. The fact that this does not happen testifies perhaps to the effectiveness of the combined strategies of exclusion, criminalization and brutalization of potentially ‘problematic’ strata. Page 115
Most democratic political systems move today from the parliamentary or party rule models towards the model of ‘opinion poll rule’. Page 117
…this attitude leads in practice to the rule of the ‘median voter’ principle. Page 117
To this ‘movement politics’ Rorty opposes the ‘campaign politics’ Page 122
Campaign politics looks attractive precisely as a substitution for the discredited movement politics, notorious for neglecting the real present for the sake of an imaginary future, only to neglect again today’s future the moment it stops being imaginary. Page 123
Moral impulses aroused by the sight of human misery are safely channelled into sporadic outbursts of charity in the form of Live Aid, Comic Aid or money collections for the most recent wave of refugees. Justice turns into a festive, holiday event; this helps to placate the moral conscience and to bear with the absence of justice during working days. Lack of justice becomes the norm and the daily routine. ... Page 126
Truly modern is not the readiness to delay gratification, but the impossibility of being gratified. Page 132
But metaphors transform both sides that enter the metaphorical relationship. Page 158
The world construed of durable objects has been replaced with disposable products designed for immediate obsolescence. In such a world, identities can be adopted and discarded like a change of costume. Page 162
And so the snag is no more how to discover, invent, construct, assemble (even buy) an identity, but how to prevent it from being too tight – and from sticking too fast to the body. Page 164
The figure of the tourist is the epitome of such avoidance. … theirs is the miracle of being in and out of place at the same time. The tourists keep their distance, and bar the distance from shrinking into proximity. Page 164
The vagabonds are the waste of the world which has dedicated itself to tourists’ services. Page 169
The tourists stay or move at their hearts’ desire. They abandon the site when new untried opportunities beckon elsewhere. The vagabonds, however, know that they won’t stay for long, however strongly they wish to, since nowhere they stop are they welcome: if the tourists move because they find the world irresistibly attractive, the vagabonds move because they find the world unbearably inhospitable. Page 169
The vagabonds are, one may say, involuntary tourists; but the notion of ‘involuntary tourist’ is a contradiction in terms. Page 169
One may say that in this world of ours signs float in search of meanings, meanings drift in search of signs. Page 194
Postmodern discontents are born of freedom rather than of oppression. Page 227
So, Marx said that one of the things Capitalism did to ensure lower wages was to create a reserve army of the unemployed. The point of this reserve army – over and above forcing down wages, was that it would literally be standing in reserve, that there would come a time when this army (or members from that army) would need to be deployed. The scientific and technological revolution has diminished the need for such a reserve army. In fact, unemployment today is much more ‘structural’ than ‘temporary’ – even by Capitalism’s standards. Many of the people the unemployed will never get work, certainly never get ‘life time’ work or anything approaching the kinds of security that would allow them lives that might define them as ‘fully human’.
Communism and fascism were thoroughly modern ideologies. Basically, they were concerned with cleanliness. There were two things you could do with ‘the stranger’ – someone dirty in the sense of being ‘out of place’ – you can either eat them (and therefore incorporate them into your body – assimilation) or you can vomit them out of your society altogether. The Nazi death camps and Soviet show trails were examples of the latter strategy. Purity or race or of class were the long-term aims.
But postmodern society has different notions of cleanliness. Quite odd and contradictory things are occurring in our late-modern world. For some (well, the rich) there essentially is no such thing as the nation state. They move about the world at will and consider themselves to be citizens of that world. In this sense they are like commodities and money – the whole of the system is outraged if any restriction is placed on their free movement. So, we have things like the North American Free Trade Agreement at precisely the same time as huge fences are being erected to keep Mexicans out of the US. “Give me your shiny, shine stuff – you can keep your poor, huddled masses.” Nation states only exist for the poor.
And the poor are different now – no longer a reserve army, they are the failed consumers and therefore failed citizens and human beings. Where we once needed to look after these people because they would one day be needed, there is no chance they will ever be needed now. They are dirt in all senses – and so they are to blame for their own situations. This is why we live in a post-welfare state – we just can’t afford these people any more. Or, we can afford them – we can afford to put them in prisons rather than houses or schools – we need to be protected from them. They are dirt – no, worse, they are slime, because slime sticks to your hands and doesn’t let go. They must be vomited out – they were given their chance to assimilate and they failed. For our own protection we need to forcibly remove them, force them into ghettoes, build fences to keep them out, they are the criminals and the insane, lazy and selfish.
And in a parody of the dialectical idea of an identity of opposites, Bauman talks about how those at the top of the order have become essentially tourists – interested, but basically disinterested too in the societies they encounter from their safe and forever welcomed locations no matter where they go. He compares this experience with that of the vagabond, the enforced tourist – always having to move (or move on, rather) and of never being welcomed.
Watching how Australia is currently treating its asylum seekers – the agonies this is costing me because I find it nearly impossible to believe Australia is so lacking in any semblance of compassion – this is a book I would force on our leaders. Except, of course, they are beyond whatever help might come from such a book. But perhaps you aren’t – worth reading this to find out.
Some quotes:
Sixty-five years after Civilization and its Discontents was written and published, individual freedom rules supreme; it is the value by which all other values came to be evaluated, and the benchmark against which the wisdom of all supra-individual rules and resolutions are to be measured. Page 12
‘The German Final Solution’, observed the American writer Cynthia Ozick, ‘was an aesthetic solution; it was a job of editing, it was the artist’s finger removing a smudge; it simply annihilated what was considered not harmonious.’ Page 17
Purity is an ideal; a vision of the condition which needs yet to be created, or such as needs to be diligently protected against the genuine or imagined odds. Page 18
To conclude, if uncleanliness is matter out of place, we must approach it through order. Uncleanliness or dirt is that which must not be included if a pattern is to be maintained. Page 21
This is what ‘the locals’ (who, to be sure, could think of themselves as ‘locals’ and constitute themselves into ‘locals’ only in as far as they opposed themselves to the ‘strangers’ – that is, to some other people who were not ‘locals’) did, let me repeat, at all times and places. Page 26
Strangers are no longer routine, and thus the routine ways of keeping things pure do not suffice. Page 28
Modern utopias differed in many of their detailed prescriptions, but they all agreed that the ‘perfect world’ would be one remaining forever identical with itself, a world in which the wisdom learnt today will remain wise tomorrow and the day after tomorrow Page 28
The world depicted in the utopias was also, expectedly, a transparent world – one in which nothing dark or impenetrable stood in the way of the eye; a world with nothing spoiling the harmony; nothing ‘out of place’; a world without ‘dirt’; a world without strangers. Pages 28-9
Nazism and communism excelled in pushing the totalitarian tendency to its radical extreme – the first by condensing the complexity of the ‘purity’ problem in its modern form into that of the purity of race, the second into that of the purity of class. Page 29
In the postmodern world of freely competing styles and life patterns there is still one stern test of purity which whoever applies for admission is required to pass: one needs to be capable of being seduced by the infinite possibility and constant renewal promoted by the consumer market, of rejoicing in the chance of putting on and taking off identities, of spending one’s life in the never ending chase after ever more intense sensations and even more exhilarating experience. Not everybody can pass that test. Those who do not are the ‘dirt’ of postmodern purity. Page 32
That every order tends to criminalize resistance to itself and outlaw its assumed or genuine enemies is evident to the point of triviality. Page 35
The pursuit of modern purity expressed itself daily in punitive action against dangerous classes; the pursuit of postmodern purity expresses itself daily in punitive action against the residents of mean streets and no-go urban areas, vagabonds and layabouts. Page 36
All societies produce strangers; but each kind of society produces its own kind of strangers, and produces them in its own inimitable way. Page 39
At some point of our century it became common knowledge that men in uniforms are to be feared most. Page 40
In this war (to borrow Lévi-Strauss’s concepts) two alternative, but also complementary strategies were intermittently deployed. One was anthropophagic: annihilating the strangers by devouring them and then metabolically transforming into a tissue indistinguishable from one’s own. This was the strategy of assimilation Page 41
The other strategy was anthropoemic: vomiting the strangers, banishing them from the limits of the orderly world and barring them from all communication with those inside. This was the strategy of exclusion Page 41
In the modern society and under the aegis of the modern state, cultural and/or physical annihilation of strangers and of the strange was a creative destruction Page 42
The strangers were, by definition, an anomaly to be rectified. Their presence was defined a priori as temporary, much as the current/fleeting stage in the prehistory of the order yet to come. Page 43
By cautious and, if anything, conservative calculations, rich Europe counts among its citizens about three million homeless, twenty million evicted from the labour market, thirty million living below the poverty line. The switch from the project of community as the guardian of the universal right to decent and dignified life, to the promotion of the market as the sufficient guarantee of the universal chance of self-enrichment, deepens further the suffering of the new poor Page 49
In their present rendering, human rights do not entail the acquisition of the right to a job, however well performed, or – more generally – the right to care and consideration for the sake of past merits. Page 49
Betting is now the rule where certainty was once sought, while taking risks replaces the stubborn pursuit of goals. And thus there is little in the world which one could consider solid and reliable Page 51
As we have seen, it is the widespread characteristic of contemporary men and women in our type of society that they live perpetually with the ‘identity problem’ unsolved. Page 53
The slimy, says Sartre, is docile – or so it seems to be. Page 54
For some residents of the modern city, secure in their burglar-proof homes in leafy suburbs … the ‘stranger’ is as pleasurable as the surfing beach, and not at all slimy. The strangers run restaurants promising unusual, exciting experiences to the taste-buds. Page 57
The sliminess of strangers, let us repeat, is the reflection of their own powerlessness. It is their own lack of power that crystallizes in their eyes as the awesome might of the strangers. The weak meet and confront the weak; but both feel like Davids fighting Goliaths. Each is ‘slimy’ to the other; but each fights the sliminess of the other in the name of the purity of its own. Page 59
In 1981, 2.9 million criminal offences were recorded in England and Wales. In 1993, 5.5 million. In the last three years, the prison population has risen from 40,606 to 51,243. Between 1971 and 1993, public expenditure on the police rose from £2.8 billion to £7.7 billion. From 1984 to 1994, the number of practising solicitors went up from 44,837 to 63,628, and of practising barristers from 5,203 to 8,093. Page 70
Jobs for life are no more. As a matter of fact jobs as such, as we once understood them, are no more. Page 72
The Welfare State had to reach where industry did not; it had to bear the marginal costs of capital’s race for profit, to make the left-behind labour employable again – an effort which capital itself would not or could not undertake. Page 73
This new perspective is expressed in the fashionable phrase: ‘Welfare State? We can no longer afford it’ ... Page 73
Every type of social order produces some visions of the dangers which threaten its identity. Page 74
The society which obtains order-stabilizing behavioural patterns from its members who have been evicted or are about to be evicted from their statuses as producers and defined instead as, first and foremost, consumers. Page 77
Unlike production, consumption is a thoroughly individual activity: it also sets individuals at cross purposes, often at each other’s throats. Page 77
…there are no standards except those of grabbing more, and no rules, except the imperative of ‘playing one’s cards right’. Page 79
Given the nature of the game now played, the hardships and misery of those left out of it, once treated as a collectively caused blight which needs to be dealt with by collective means, can be only redefined as an individual crime. The ‘dangerous classes’ are thus redefined as classes of criminals. And so the prisons now fully and truly deputize for the fading welfare institutions. Pages 80-1
Nowhere is the connection exposed more fully than in the United States, where the unqualified rule of the consumer market reached, in the years of Reaganite free-for-all, further than in any other country. The years of deregulation and dismantling of the welfare provisions were also the years of rising criminality, of a growing police force and prison population. Page 82
As Linebaugh suggests, the spectacle of execution is ‘cynically used by politicians to terrorize a growing underclass’. But in demanding the terrorization of the underclass, the silent American majority attempts to terrorize its own inner terrors ... Page 83
These few facts signal the new casting of the poor in its new version of the ‘underclass’, or the ‘class beyond the classes’: no longer is it the ‘reserve army of labour’, but fully and truly the ‘redundant population’. What is it good for? For the supply of spare parts to repair other human bodies? Page 84
Increasingly, being poor is seen as crime; becoming poor, as the product of criminal predispositions or intentions – abuse of alcohol, gambling, drugs, truancy and vagabondage. The poor, far from meriting care and assistance, deserve hate and condemnation – as the very incarnation of sin. Page 84
Kant’s trust in the grip of ethical law rested on the conviction that there are arguments of reason which every reasonable person, being a reasonable person, must accept; the passage from ethical law to ethical action led through rational thought. Page 103
Kant’s categorical imperative (that is, no principle which cannot be violated without violating simultaneously the logical law of contradiction). Page 103
The poor of today are no longer the ‘exploited people’ producing the surplus product later to be transformed into capital; nor are they the ‘reserve army of labour’, expected to be reintegrated into that capital-producing process at the next economic upturn. Economically speaking (and today also politically elected governments speak in the language of economy), they are fully and truly redundant, useless, disposable and there is no ‘rational reason’ for their continuing presence ... Page 111
These results are sought through the two-pronged strategy of the criminalization of poverty and the brutalization of the poor. Page 111
The ‘problem’ of the poor is recast as the question of law and order, and social funds once earmarked for the rehabilitation of people temporarily out of work (in economic terms, the recommodification of labour) are pumped over into the construction and technological updating of prisons and other punitive/surveillance outfits. Page 112
Under such conditions, one would expect a widespread feeling of injustice, with the potential to condense into a mass protest movement, if not an open rebellion against the system. The fact that this does not happen testifies perhaps to the effectiveness of the combined strategies of exclusion, criminalization and brutalization of potentially ‘problematic’ strata. Page 115
Most democratic political systems move today from the parliamentary or party rule models towards the model of ‘opinion poll rule’. Page 117
…this attitude leads in practice to the rule of the ‘median voter’ principle. Page 117
To this ‘movement politics’ Rorty opposes the ‘campaign politics’ Page 122
Campaign politics looks attractive precisely as a substitution for the discredited movement politics, notorious for neglecting the real present for the sake of an imaginary future, only to neglect again today’s future the moment it stops being imaginary. Page 123
Moral impulses aroused by the sight of human misery are safely channelled into sporadic outbursts of charity in the form of Live Aid, Comic Aid or money collections for the most recent wave of refugees. Justice turns into a festive, holiday event; this helps to placate the moral conscience and to bear with the absence of justice during working days. Lack of justice becomes the norm and the daily routine. ... Page 126
Truly modern is not the readiness to delay gratification, but the impossibility of being gratified. Page 132
But metaphors transform both sides that enter the metaphorical relationship. Page 158
The world construed of durable objects has been replaced with disposable products designed for immediate obsolescence. In such a world, identities can be adopted and discarded like a change of costume. Page 162
And so the snag is no more how to discover, invent, construct, assemble (even buy) an identity, but how to prevent it from being too tight – and from sticking too fast to the body. Page 164
The figure of the tourist is the epitome of such avoidance. … theirs is the miracle of being in and out of place at the same time. The tourists keep their distance, and bar the distance from shrinking into proximity. Page 164
The vagabonds are the waste of the world which has dedicated itself to tourists’ services. Page 169
The tourists stay or move at their hearts’ desire. They abandon the site when new untried opportunities beckon elsewhere. The vagabonds, however, know that they won’t stay for long, however strongly they wish to, since nowhere they stop are they welcome: if the tourists move because they find the world irresistibly attractive, the vagabonds move because they find the world unbearably inhospitable. Page 169
The vagabonds are, one may say, involuntary tourists; but the notion of ‘involuntary tourist’ is a contradiction in terms. Page 169
One may say that in this world of ours signs float in search of meanings, meanings drift in search of signs. Page 194
Postmodern discontents are born of freedom rather than of oppression. Page 227
May 5, 2015
Le tesi di Bauman sono famose, sono diventate un punto di riferimento del pensiero occidentale contemporaneo. Chi per sentito dire o chi per diretta lettura, bene o male conosce quanto sostenuto dal sociologo. Questo testo lo consiglio caldamente poiché riassume tutto il pensiero di questo grande pensatore, permettendo al lettore di avere una vasta panoramica su molti temi: dall'estetica all'etica, dai problemi politici ai problemi morali. A causa della sua vastità, il testo risulta molto denso e per questo di difficile lettura: bisogna avere una certa cultura personale per impantanarsi su alcune pagine. Ad esempio, credo che sia quasi necessario aver già letto 'Sorvegliare e punire' di Foucault per poter vivere appieno le pagine di Bauman, infatti tale testo risulta essere la base dal quale il sociologo porta avanti le sua ricerche. Anche se i saggi contenuti in questo testo parlano di temi diversi tra loro, sono accomunati da un elemento: vi è un costante confronto dialettico tra ciò che è stata la modernità e ciò che è la postmodernità.
Forse è uno dei testi meno 'commerciabili' di Bauman, ma forse quello di più larghe vedute. Fortemente consigliato a chi voglia avere degli strumenti forti per guardare con maggiore chiarezza il mondo contemporaneo.
Forse è uno dei testi meno 'commerciabili' di Bauman, ma forse quello di più larghe vedute. Fortemente consigliato a chi voglia avere degli strumenti forti per guardare con maggiore chiarezza il mondo contemporaneo.
May 7, 2022
Thank god this book actually defines “postmodernity.”
November 23, 2020
Kalbėti apie avangardą postmoderniame pasaulyje nėra prasmės.
Modernizmas buvo protestas prieš sulaužytus pažadus ir sudužusias viltis, bet taip pat - liudijimas to, kaip rimtai buvo žiūrima į tuos pažadus ir viltis.
Filosofas Stefanas Morawskis sudarė išsamų bruožų, jungiančių visus meninio avangardo sektorius, inventorių - visi jie buvo persiėmę novatoriškumo dvasia, visi žvelgė į esamą menų būklę su pasidygėjimu ir antipatija, visi kritikavo menams tuo metu skirtą vaidmenį visuomenėje, visi juokėsi iš praeities ir šaipėsi iš jos brangintų kanonų, visi noriai svarstė savo pačių kūrybos būdus ir priemones, suteikdami savo meniniams laimėjimams gilesnę istorinę prasmę; visi jie sekė revoliucinių judėjimų pavyzdžiu, buvo linkę veikti kolektyviai, kūrė ir stojo į sektas primenančias brolijas, karštai aptarinėjo bendras programas ir rašė manifestus; visi žvelgė toli už meno siaurąja prasme karalystės ribų, suvokdami menus ir menininkus kaip priešakinius progreso kariuomenės būrius, kaip kolektyvinį ateisiančio laiko pranašą, preliminarų universalaus rytojaus modelio projektą, o kartais - taraną, kurio funkcija - sutrinti į dulkes užtvaras, pastatytas istorijos kelyje.
Modernistai buvo plus moderne que la modernite elle-meme (modernesni už pačią modernybę). Jie tikėjo, kad vienintelė nauda iš tradicijos - žinojimas, ką reikia sulaužyti, o ribos yra tam, kad būtų ką peržengti. Dauguma jų sėmėsi idėjų ir drąsos (taip pat pasitikėjimo savimi, leidusio jiems švaistytis liaupsėmis ar pasmerkimais) iš mokslo bei technologijos, tų labiausiai į nieką neatsižvelgiančių, linkusių rizikuoti ir nepagarbių modernaus tradicijų daužymo smogikų: impresionistai - iš antiniutoniškos optikos, kubistai - iš antikarteziškos reliatyvumo teorijos, siurrealistai - iš psichoanalizės, futuristai - iš vidaus degimo variklių ir konvejerių. Be modernybės ir visų jos darbų modernistai būtų neįsivaizduojami. Jie norėjo tarnauti modernybei. Jie nekalti, kad jiems teko primesti save ir savo pasiūlymą to nenorinčiai visuomenei. Žmonės pasenusiu skoniu (neturinčiais skonio) negalinčius ar nenorinčius suvokti avangardo įžvalgų. Jie apibendrino tuos brutalius ir niekingus žmones kolektyviniu buržua įvaizdžiu, pavadino juos miesčionimis, apšaukė vulgariais, nemandagiais ar diletantiškais. Tuos nesubrendėlius, neišsivysčiusius, atsilikėlius modernistai norėjo apšviesti, mokyti, lavinti ir atversti į savo tikėjimą. Pagaliau juk modernistai galėjo išlikti avangardo pozicijose tik laikydami kitus dar neišsikleidusiais, paskendusiais tamsybėse, laukiančiais apšvietimo. Bet tikrą pasibaisėjimą modernistams kėlė atvejai, kai pamokos pasirodydavo per lengvos ir nereikalaujančios pastangų, nes jų pasiūlymai būdavo priimami visuotiniu pritarimu, o jų darbai tapdavo populiarūs. Tai galėjo būti nepakankamo radikalumo, prarasto budrumo, neatleidžiamo kompromiso su skoniu (veikiau beskonybe), kuriai reikėjo priešintis iki mirties, rezultatas. Kad ir kokia būtų priežastis, avangardinė avangardo tapatybė taptų abejotina - kartu su jo teise į dvasinį vadovavimą, teise užgaulioti savimi patenkintus moralistus, teise prisiimti misionieriaus pozą.
Taigi avangardo paradoksas yra tas, kad jis sėkmę priėmė kaip nesėkmės ženklą, tuo tarpu pralaimėjimas jam reiškė jo teisumo patvirtinimą. Avangardas kentėjo, kai visuomenė jį atsisakė pripažinti, bet dar labiau kankinosi, kai pagaliau sulaukė išsvajotos šlovės ir pritarimo.
Modernybė gimė po savižudybės ženklu.
Rinka greitai suuodė milžinišką stratifikuojantį "nesuprantamų menų" potencialą. Jeigu nori pranešti sau lygiems apie savo sėkmę pasaulyje ir turi pakankamai lėšų - papuošk savo rezidenciją naujausiais priešakinės linijos menų išradimais, kurie trikdė ir gąsdino eilinius, nerafinuotus mirtinguosius. Be to, taip gali parodyti savo gerą skonį ir pademonstruoti, koks atstumas skiria jį nuo kitų. Stulbinanti komercinė sėkmė sudavė mirtiną smūgį avangardiniam menui, dabar "inkorporuotam" į "meno rinką". Dėl jam būdingo kontroversiškumo tas menas tapo socialinio išskirtinumo ženklu - kaip tik šia savo galia jis patraukė garbėtroškas klientus iš arriviste (žemo socialinio statuso žmogus, žūtbūt norintis prasimušti), kylančios vidurinės klasės, abejojančios savo socialiniu statusu ir trokštančios apsiginkluoti visiems suprantamais prestižo simboliais, tarpo. Savo pirmine, estetine, galia avangardinis menas galėjo kaip ir anksčiau atstumti, šokiruoti ir gluminti žiūrovus; kita, stratifikuojančia ir steigiančia išskirtinumą galia jis traukė vis augantį nekritiškų gerbėjų ratą ir svarbiausia - pirkėjų skaičių.
Avangardas ko bijojo, tą gavo netrukus - pripažinimas, adoracija ir garbinimas materealizavosi ne kaip geidžiamas modernizavimo misijos triumfas, ne naujo tikėjimo manifestaciją, bet kaip įperkamų aukštesnio statuso ženklų paieškos.
Umberto Eco teigė, kad prigimtinė avangardo nuotykio riba pasiekta tuščiose ar suanglėjusiose drobėse, ištrintuose Rauschenbergo piešiniuose, tuščioje Niujorko galerijoje per privatų Yves'o Kleino parodos pristatymą, Kaselyje Walterio de Marios iškastoje duobėje, tylioje Cage'o kompozicijoje fortepijonui, Roberto Barry "telepatetinėje parodoje" ir tuščiuose neparašytų eilėraščių puslapiuose. Menų, patiriamų kaip nuolatinė revoliucija, riba buvo savidestrukcija. Atėjo akimirka, kai nebeliko kur eiti. Tad avangardiniai menai paaiškėjo besą modernūs savo intencija, bet postmodernūs savo pasėkme. Stratifikuojanti galia dabar priklauso ne tiek meno kūriniams, kiek vietai, kurioje jie apžiūrimi ar perkami, ir kainai, kurios už juos reikalaujama. Meno kūrinys nesiskiria nuo kitų parduodamų prekių.
Meninis avangardas kaip revoliucinė veikla. Didelė simpatija revoliucinei tiek kairiųjų, tiek dešiniųjų politikai bei tikėjimas dvasine bendryste ir bendru tikslu - simpatija buvo juo gilesnė ir entuziastiškesnė, juo radikalesnė ar net totalitarinė buvo atitinkama politika. Tačiau retroperpektyviai ta simpatija atrodo kaip meilė be atsako istorija: politiniai revoliucionieriai, savaime suprantama, įtariai žiūrėjo į kiekvieną iškėlusį principus ir kanonus aukščiau partinės disciplinos reikalavimo; be to, elitaristiniai menininkų polinkiai galėjo sukelti pavojų politikų siekiui masių paramos, tokiam panašiam į "liaudiško skonio", kurį avangardas buvo prisiekęs sunaikinti, garbinimą. Tikėtasi, kad menas įspraus socialinę tikrovę į šabloną, kurio tikrovė, pati savaime ir nepadedama, nebuvo linkusi užpildyti.
Dabarties menams neberūpi socialinės tikrovės forma, jie pasikėlė į sui generis (unikalią, vienintelę) tikrovę, kuri sau pakankama. Šiuo požiūriu menai išgyvena sunkią postmodernios kultūros būklę - kultūros, kurią kaip sakė Jeanas Baudrillard'as, simuliakrų, o ne reprezentacijos kultūra. Menas dabar yra viena iš daugelio alternatyvių tikrovių, o kiekviena tikrovė turi savo neišsakomas prielaidas ir atvirai skelbiamas tų prielaidų savęs teigimo ir autentiškumo patvirtinimo procedūras bei mechanizmus. Vis sunkiau nuspręsti, kuri iš daugelio tikrovių yra "tikresnė", kuri pirminė ir kuri antrinė, kuri turi tarnauti kaip atskaitos taškas bei taisyklingumo ar adekvatumo kriterijus visoms kitoms. Simuliacija nėra klastotė ar apsimetinėjimas, ji panašesnė į psichosomatinę ligą, kai skausmas tikras, o klausimas ar liga tikra nebeturi prasmės.
Dabartinėje postmodernioje situacijoje kalbėti apie avangardą nėra prasmės.
Modernizmas buvo protestas prieš sulaužytus pažadus ir sudužusias viltis, bet taip pat - liudijimas to, kaip rimtai buvo žiūrima į tuos pažadus ir viltis.
Filosofas Stefanas Morawskis sudarė išsamų bruožų, jungiančių visus meninio avangardo sektorius, inventorių - visi jie buvo persiėmę novatoriškumo dvasia, visi žvelgė į esamą menų būklę su pasidygėjimu ir antipatija, visi kritikavo menams tuo metu skirtą vaidmenį visuomenėje, visi juokėsi iš praeities ir šaipėsi iš jos brangintų kanonų, visi noriai svarstė savo pačių kūrybos būdus ir priemones, suteikdami savo meniniams laimėjimams gilesnę istorinę prasmę; visi jie sekė revoliucinių judėjimų pavyzdžiu, buvo linkę veikti kolektyviai, kūrė ir stojo į sektas primenančias brolijas, karštai aptarinėjo bendras programas ir rašė manifestus; visi žvelgė toli už meno siaurąja prasme karalystės ribų, suvokdami menus ir menininkus kaip priešakinius progreso kariuomenės būrius, kaip kolektyvinį ateisiančio laiko pranašą, preliminarų universalaus rytojaus modelio projektą, o kartais - taraną, kurio funkcija - sutrinti į dulkes užtvaras, pastatytas istorijos kelyje.
Modernistai buvo plus moderne que la modernite elle-meme (modernesni už pačią modernybę). Jie tikėjo, kad vienintelė nauda iš tradicijos - žinojimas, ką reikia sulaužyti, o ribos yra tam, kad būtų ką peržengti. Dauguma jų sėmėsi idėjų ir drąsos (taip pat pasitikėjimo savimi, leidusio jiems švaistytis liaupsėmis ar pasmerkimais) iš mokslo bei technologijos, tų labiausiai į nieką neatsižvelgiančių, linkusių rizikuoti ir nepagarbių modernaus tradicijų daužymo smogikų: impresionistai - iš antiniutoniškos optikos, kubistai - iš antikarteziškos reliatyvumo teorijos, siurrealistai - iš psichoanalizės, futuristai - iš vidaus degimo variklių ir konvejerių. Be modernybės ir visų jos darbų modernistai būtų neįsivaizduojami. Jie norėjo tarnauti modernybei. Jie nekalti, kad jiems teko primesti save ir savo pasiūlymą to nenorinčiai visuomenei. Žmonės pasenusiu skoniu (neturinčiais skonio) negalinčius ar nenorinčius suvokti avangardo įžvalgų. Jie apibendrino tuos brutalius ir niekingus žmones kolektyviniu buržua įvaizdžiu, pavadino juos miesčionimis, apšaukė vulgariais, nemandagiais ar diletantiškais. Tuos nesubrendėlius, neišsivysčiusius, atsilikėlius modernistai norėjo apšviesti, mokyti, lavinti ir atversti į savo tikėjimą. Pagaliau juk modernistai galėjo išlikti avangardo pozicijose tik laikydami kitus dar neišsikleidusiais, paskendusiais tamsybėse, laukiančiais apšvietimo. Bet tikrą pasibaisėjimą modernistams kėlė atvejai, kai pamokos pasirodydavo per lengvos ir nereikalaujančios pastangų, nes jų pasiūlymai būdavo priimami visuotiniu pritarimu, o jų darbai tapdavo populiarūs. Tai galėjo būti nepakankamo radikalumo, prarasto budrumo, neatleidžiamo kompromiso su skoniu (veikiau beskonybe), kuriai reikėjo priešintis iki mirties, rezultatas. Kad ir kokia būtų priežastis, avangardinė avangardo tapatybė taptų abejotina - kartu su jo teise į dvasinį vadovavimą, teise užgaulioti savimi patenkintus moralistus, teise prisiimti misionieriaus pozą.
Taigi avangardo paradoksas yra tas, kad jis sėkmę priėmė kaip nesėkmės ženklą, tuo tarpu pralaimėjimas jam reiškė jo teisumo patvirtinimą. Avangardas kentėjo, kai visuomenė jį atsisakė pripažinti, bet dar labiau kankinosi, kai pagaliau sulaukė išsvajotos šlovės ir pritarimo.
Modernybė gimė po savižudybės ženklu.
Rinka greitai suuodė milžinišką stratifikuojantį "nesuprantamų menų" potencialą. Jeigu nori pranešti sau lygiems apie savo sėkmę pasaulyje ir turi pakankamai lėšų - papuošk savo rezidenciją naujausiais priešakinės linijos menų išradimais, kurie trikdė ir gąsdino eilinius, nerafinuotus mirtinguosius. Be to, taip gali parodyti savo gerą skonį ir pademonstruoti, koks atstumas skiria jį nuo kitų. Stulbinanti komercinė sėkmė sudavė mirtiną smūgį avangardiniam menui, dabar "inkorporuotam" į "meno rinką". Dėl jam būdingo kontroversiškumo tas menas tapo socialinio išskirtinumo ženklu - kaip tik šia savo galia jis patraukė garbėtroškas klientus iš arriviste (žemo socialinio statuso žmogus, žūtbūt norintis prasimušti), kylančios vidurinės klasės, abejojančios savo socialiniu statusu ir trokštančios apsiginkluoti visiems suprantamais prestižo simboliais, tarpo. Savo pirmine, estetine, galia avangardinis menas galėjo kaip ir anksčiau atstumti, šokiruoti ir gluminti žiūrovus; kita, stratifikuojančia ir steigiančia išskirtinumą galia jis traukė vis augantį nekritiškų gerbėjų ratą ir svarbiausia - pirkėjų skaičių.
Avangardas ko bijojo, tą gavo netrukus - pripažinimas, adoracija ir garbinimas materealizavosi ne kaip geidžiamas modernizavimo misijos triumfas, ne naujo tikėjimo manifestaciją, bet kaip įperkamų aukštesnio statuso ženklų paieškos.
Umberto Eco teigė, kad prigimtinė avangardo nuotykio riba pasiekta tuščiose ar suanglėjusiose drobėse, ištrintuose Rauschenbergo piešiniuose, tuščioje Niujorko galerijoje per privatų Yves'o Kleino parodos pristatymą, Kaselyje Walterio de Marios iškastoje duobėje, tylioje Cage'o kompozicijoje fortepijonui, Roberto Barry "telepatetinėje parodoje" ir tuščiuose neparašytų eilėraščių puslapiuose. Menų, patiriamų kaip nuolatinė revoliucija, riba buvo savidestrukcija. Atėjo akimirka, kai nebeliko kur eiti. Tad avangardiniai menai paaiškėjo besą modernūs savo intencija, bet postmodernūs savo pasėkme. Stratifikuojanti galia dabar priklauso ne tiek meno kūriniams, kiek vietai, kurioje jie apžiūrimi ar perkami, ir kainai, kurios už juos reikalaujama. Meno kūrinys nesiskiria nuo kitų parduodamų prekių.
Meninis avangardas kaip revoliucinė veikla. Didelė simpatija revoliucinei tiek kairiųjų, tiek dešiniųjų politikai bei tikėjimas dvasine bendryste ir bendru tikslu - simpatija buvo juo gilesnė ir entuziastiškesnė, juo radikalesnė ar net totalitarinė buvo atitinkama politika. Tačiau retroperpektyviai ta simpatija atrodo kaip meilė be atsako istorija: politiniai revoliucionieriai, savaime suprantama, įtariai žiūrėjo į kiekvieną iškėlusį principus ir kanonus aukščiau partinės disciplinos reikalavimo; be to, elitaristiniai menininkų polinkiai galėjo sukelti pavojų politikų siekiui masių paramos, tokiam panašiam į "liaudiško skonio", kurį avangardas buvo prisiekęs sunaikinti, garbinimą. Tikėtasi, kad menas įspraus socialinę tikrovę į šabloną, kurio tikrovė, pati savaime ir nepadedama, nebuvo linkusi užpildyti.
Dabarties menams neberūpi socialinės tikrovės forma, jie pasikėlė į sui generis (unikalią, vienintelę) tikrovę, kuri sau pakankama. Šiuo požiūriu menai išgyvena sunkią postmodernios kultūros būklę - kultūros, kurią kaip sakė Jeanas Baudrillard'as, simuliakrų, o ne reprezentacijos kultūra. Menas dabar yra viena iš daugelio alternatyvių tikrovių, o kiekviena tikrovė turi savo neišsakomas prielaidas ir atvirai skelbiamas tų prielaidų savęs teigimo ir autentiškumo patvirtinimo procedūras bei mechanizmus. Vis sunkiau nuspręsti, kuri iš daugelio tikrovių yra "tikresnė", kuri pirminė ir kuri antrinė, kuri turi tarnauti kaip atskaitos taškas bei taisyklingumo ar adekvatumo kriterijus visoms kitoms. Simuliacija nėra klastotė ar apsimetinėjimas, ji panašesnė į psichosomatinę ligą, kai skausmas tikras, o klausimas ar liga tikra nebeturi prasmės.
Dabartinėje postmodernioje situacijoje kalbėti apie avangardą nėra prasmės.
March 16, 2015
This book is absolutely wonderful and very worth reading for persons interested in the current milieu of postmodern societies. The chapters are short but poignant and the prose is both in-depth but very readable (although I did have to consult a dictionary/wikipedia more than once for words and concepts with which I was unfamiliar). I expect I will return to this book more than once in the future as a source of information/quotes and also to repeatedly read.
Read
January 26, 2021*Lectura obligatoria*
November 1, 2023
Mr Bauman you are like a god to me right now
January 1, 2019
Oggi si parla spesso di identità minacciate, di cultura italiana e cultura degli altri, visti spesso come invasori o, alla meno peggio, visitatori indesiderati.
Baumann però ci ammonisce: quello di costruirsi un’identità è oggi un bisogno universalmente sentito, incoraggiato e proposto dai più autorevoli media culturali, ma il possedere un’identità solida e resistente ai cambiamenti, un’identità per tutta la vita, risulta (...) un ostacolo piuttosto che un vantaggio (...)".
Questo perché in un epoca in cui sempre più spesso sia ha la sensazione di non poter controllare neppure il proprio destino, il migrante viene erroneamente visto come un ulteriore elemento di disturbo e, anzi, trasformato nella principale causa di questa incapacità a decidere di noi stessi.
"Questo tipo di gente sentirà l’estraneità come una forza minacciosa, soffocante e paralizzante, in quanto impossibile da circoscrivere dentro precise frontiere".
Baumann però ci ammonisce: quello di costruirsi un’identità è oggi un bisogno universalmente sentito, incoraggiato e proposto dai più autorevoli media culturali, ma il possedere un’identità solida e resistente ai cambiamenti, un’identità per tutta la vita, risulta (...) un ostacolo piuttosto che un vantaggio (...)".
Questo perché in un epoca in cui sempre più spesso sia ha la sensazione di non poter controllare neppure il proprio destino, il migrante viene erroneamente visto come un ulteriore elemento di disturbo e, anzi, trasformato nella principale causa di questa incapacità a decidere di noi stessi.
"Questo tipo di gente sentirà l’estraneità come una forza minacciosa, soffocante e paralizzante, in quanto impossibile da circoscrivere dentro precise frontiere".
July 19, 2015
O mal estar na pós-modernidade
July 19, 2024
Was worth to carry this book in the backpack for 8 months
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