Abstract
While I was reading Zygmunt Bauman and the Theory of Culture, I began to feel a strange familiarity toward Bauman as if I had known him personally. I suspect this was because every page of the book was filled with Dariusz Brzeziński’s goodwill toward Bauman. Although Brzeziński writes matter-of-factly, his utmost care and seriousness in examining Bauman's work conveys indirectly, but powerfully, his deep appreciation of what Bauman did for the discipline of sociology and wider society. This is a wonderfully intimate biography, and I thank Brzeziński for helping me better understand Bauman's work and life.
Apart from the sheer pleasure of reading the book, I find two significant intellectual merits in Brzeziński’s interpretation of Bauman's thinking that evolved over six decades across Poland, Israel, and England. The first merit is that Brzeziński enhances our understanding of Bauman's theory of culture by incorporating his hitherto understudied Polish-language writings (hence this merit also owes to Katarzyna Bartoszyńska, who translated Brzeziński’s book). Specifically, Brzeziński sheds light on how Bauman's intellectual, political, and ethical orientations were formed during his Polish years: his appreciation of the irreducible complexity of the world and its psychological consequences, his belief in the critical and transformative function of culture in society, and his humanistic sensitivity to various forms of human suffering. After Brzeziński shows the formation of these foundational orientations at the beginning of Bauman's professional career, it makes much more sense how Bauman went on, during his subsequent years in Israel and England, to theorize the structural conditions of modernity and postmodernity vis-à-vis their psychological correlates, such as “ambivalence” and “retrotopia,” while articulating his visions of “postmodern ethics” and “global responsibility.”
More generally, Brzeziński’s cross-language endeavor to broaden our understanding of Bauman's theory of culture helps advance the frontier of “global sociology,” for it foregrounds the significance of non-English sociological work in line with longstanding efforts by Syed Farid Alatas, R. W. Connell, and various indigenous and “nonwestern” sociologists who facilitated dialogues between thinkers who operated in different languages and cultures. Effectively, Brzeziński expands the conventional, English-based understanding of Bauman's work by including Polish-language materials and hence enriches the linguistic and cultural heritage for sociologists around the world. The book thus contributes to the growing intellectual movement, organized around the International Sociological Association, to “cosmopolitanize” global sociology.
The second merit is that Brzeziński foregrounds Bauman's oft-neglected identity as a critical theorist. At first glance, Bauman was merely an observer, though an extremely astute one, who focused on generalizing the conditions of modernity, postmodernity, and globalization with such sweeping and striking imageries as “gardening,”“liquidity,” and “vagabond.” In fact, his writings did not seem to be as ardent as those by his contemporaries Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas. Nevertheless, as Brzeziński convincingly shows, Bauman's early writings already embodied his critically humanistic impulses: his belief in the emancipatory potential of culture in fostering critical attitudes toward the status quo and in the holistic nature of human identity encompassing corporeality and spirituality, as well as his commitment to “engaged sociology,” to participate in the world he was observing.
Perhaps Bauman deliberately avoided emphasizing his identity as a critical theorist because he was acutely aware of the risk of critical theorists becoming “legislators” who would impose their own versions of “truth” on ordinary people; instead, he might have chosen to participate in the world as an “interpreter” to facilitate mutual understanding between different groups of people and, ultimately, their peaceful coexistence. Thanks to Brzeziński’s effort to uncover the intellectual, political, and ethical roots of Bauman's work, it is now easier to recognize and appreciate the thread of critical theory running throughout his career.
Precisely because this second merit is so powerful, I am left with two questions for Brzeziński. My first question is an intellectual one. At the beginning, Brzeziński identifies two common points that Bauman explored consistently through his years in Poland, Israel, and England—namely, “the problem of suffering and the question of culture” (p. 6)—and declares the second point is the main subject of this book. Nevertheless, Brzeziński keeps referring to Bauman's concerns about various forms of suffering while examining how his theory of culture evolved over time. In a way, this disjunction between what Brzeziński says and does is inevitable because Bauman's thoughts on suffering and culture were two sides of the same coin; for example, for Bauman, the structural conditions of modernity and postmodernity were inexorably correlated with their psychological conditions “suffered” by individuals. Besides, as Brzeziński himself points out, Bauman's theory of culture was coterminous with his critical-theoretical orientation to support the emancipatory potential of culture to transform the status quo as a source of suffering. Although I already appreciate the book for the aforesaid merits, I cannot but wonder how the book might become even more insightful if Brzeziński were to systematically examine how “the problem of suffering and the question of culture” are intertwined in Bauman's work, instead of declaring a focus on the latter rather hurriedly.
My second and more pressing question is simultaneously reflexive, practical, and existential, and I am posing this question not only to Brzeziński but also to other sociologists, including myself: as Bauman “all the more emphasized the need for fundamental political and cultural transformations” (p. 137), what are we doing about it? Are we not too preoccupied with advancing our research for reputation, promotion, and other personal gains at the expense of contributions to the wider society? Are we not neglecting ordinary people's urgent concerns, as well as their suffering, in favor of scholarly puzzles that are narrowly defined in the disciplinary confines of sociology? In other words, how might those of us who are inspired by Bauman's work and life enact the emancipatory potential of culture through our daily practices as sociologists? I feel this is the most powerful question that Bauman posed to us, and I thank Brzeziński for conjuring it up through such an intimate intellectual biography of his older colleague and friend.