Paths in Zygmunt Bauman's Social Thought
Keith Tester:
ABSTRACT This article seeks to explore some of the origins of Zygmunt Bauman’s social thought. Using the metaphor of paths from a story by Borges, the article argues that Bauman’s work follows paths which were opened up to him by Gramsci, Camus and Levinas. Bauman has acknowledged the import- ance of Gramsci and Levinas in his intellectual development and, therefore, the identification of a path leading from Camus is offered by way of circumstantial rather than direct evidence. The article discusses each of these thinkers in the context of Bauman’s own themes and concerns and, in so doing, it is hoped to show that Bauman’s work has long been marked by a consistency of ambition and foundational assumptions.
KEYWORDS Bauman • Camus • culture • ethics • Gramsci • Levinas
Quotes:
Zygmunt Bauman has said that his ‘desert island’ book is Borges’, The Garden of Forking Paths (Bauman and Tester, 2001). Borges’ story suggests that time is a ‘garden of forking paths’, not linear but a labyrinth consisting of ‘an infinite series of times, a growing, dizzying net of divergent, conver- gent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of times’. It says that ‘time forks perpetually towards innumerable futures’ (Borges, 1970: 53). The image of a garden of forking paths assists in the task of seeking to uncover some of the character and the dominant concerns of Zygmunt Bauman’s social thought. Bauman’s thought can be understood as an attempt to recover the ‘garden of forking paths’ from the unifying and totalizing conceits that ‘this is the way that things must be’, that ‘there is no alterna- tive’, that necessity negates possibility and that social relationships and historical circumstances have placed individuals and collectivities alike on one single path which can never be transgressed. Bauman wants to put us all into the middle of the labyrinth of the forking paths so that we might, together, explore its possibilities for ourselves and realize that we are all as lost as one another, but that through according each other a measure of mutual dignity we might at least be able to endure living without a direction and a way out.
In these terms it is possible to make two comments about the work of Bauman. First, it is characterized by a commitment to the recovery and embrace of possibility. Second, it is concerned to explore the conditions and circumstances in which those possibilities are opened up or (more likely) closed down. This article identifies three of the main paths which have co- alesced into the route that Bauman’s own work pursues. These paths are found in the work of Antonio Gramsci, Albert Camus and Emmanuel Levinas. Gramsci is present in Bauman’s thought as a kind of ghostly yet eternal presence. He confirmed sociologically and politically the speculative possi- bility that the world can be other than it is. Gramsci is one of those pres- ences that is so fundamental and definite that Bauman cannot refer to him without actually undermining the presuppositions of his entire social thought. The importance of Gramsci to Bauman has been explored sensitively by Peter Beilharz (see Beilharz, 2000). Camus is present in Bauman’s thought because his book The Rebel (1953) serves to indicate exactly what it is that might be revealed in the wake of the awareness that the world can be other than it is. I ought to say before the discussion proceeds that although there is good reason to think that Bauman’s work has been marked by Camus, this is the source about which I am least confident. Bauman has only infrequently dis- cussed Camus and the connection between them is, perhaps, more by way of affinity rather than direct indebtedness. Third, Levinas is present in Bauman’s work (and his presence is utterly incontrovertible) because he provides an escape from the pit of nihilism that Camus indicates. Levinas stresses the ethical importance of the Other, of alterity, and, in so doing, provides a substantial and substantive bulwark against a too enthusiastic search for alternatives. Levinas teaches the importance of an ethical moder- ation. In this article most attention will be devoted to Gramsci and Camus. Levinas is a much more obvious path in Bauman’s work and is therefore in considerably less need of uncovering.
Bauman has said that reading Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks (1971), ‘was the major influence of my life’. Gramsci showed that it is possible to analyse and understand ‘reality as something flexible and fluid’, as a sphere of action and not just organization (Bauman, 1992a: 206). What was the context in which this influence was first felt?
Notes:
Interconnections between Bauman, Gramsci and Levinas provide insights regarding connections between critical theory and the neglect in critical theory of the meaning of time, of possibility, of transformation through an appreciation of the the interdependence of the self and other, self and society, self and all being. Moves us away from only intellect to being/experience.