Interview Zygmunt Bauman: society, language and liquid

modernity

Entrevista Zygmunt Bauman: sociedade, linguagem e modernidade lquida

Dr. Zygmunt Bauman (19 November 1925), is professor emeritus of

Sociology at the University of Leeds (1972-2004). Bauman is one of the most
eminent social theorists writing on issues as diverse as modernity,
postmodernity and liquid modernity. He has published more than sixty books,
including Culture as Praxis (19173), Modernity and The Holocaust (1989),
Liquid Modernity (2000), Liquid Life (2005) and Does the Richness of the Few
Benefit Us All? (2013). He was awarded the European Amalfi Prize for
Sociology (1992), the Theodor Adorno Award (1998) and the Prince of
Asturias Award (2010). The University of Leeds created The Bauman Institute
in his honour in 2010.

Lo Peruzzo Jnior
School of Education and Humanities at Pontifcia Universidade Catlica do
Paran PUCPR and FAE Centro Universitrio

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Lo Peruzzo Jnior - Esteemed professor Bauman, first I want to say that is

a pleasure to interview you. Thereby, initially, I would like you to tell us about
your academic trajectory. Why were your work and thoughts so chased?

Zygmunt Bauman - I am not the right address to which send this question; it
is my readers who ought to be asked
What I can say about my reasons to engage in sociological thought
and writing is only that: I came to believe that the stories sociologists tell are
bound to be and to forever remain stages of the on-going communication with

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human experience; a process of reciprocal communication unlikely ever to
grind to a halt; each successive story is another link in an unfinished - and
unfinishable - chain of exchanges. Each story is a response and a new
opening; each one ends, explicitly or tacitly, with the to be continued formula;
each one is a standing invitation to comment, to argue, to modify, to
contradict or to oppose. That dialogue neither knows of nor admits a division
into blunderers and people-in-the-know, ignoramuses and experts, learners
and teacher. Both sides enter the conversation poorer than they will in its
course become.
For more than half a century of its recent history, and because of
seeking to be of service to managerial reason, sociology struggled to
establish itself as a science/technology of un-freedom: as a design workshop
for the social settings meant to resolve in theory, but most importantly in
practice, what Talcott Parsons memorably articulated as the Hobbesian
question: how to induce/force/ indoctrinate human beings blessed/cursed
with the ambiguous gift of free will, to be normatively guided and to follow
routinely manipulable, yet predictable courses of action; or how to reconcile
free will with the willingness of submit to other peoples will, lifting thereby the
tendency to voluntary servitude, noted/anticipated by tienne la Botie at
the threshold of the modern era, to the rank of the supreme principle of social
organization. In short: how to make people to will doing what doing they
must
In our society, individualized by the decree of fate aided and abetted
by the recent change in managerial philosophy, sociology faces the exciting
and exhilarating chance of turning for a change into a science/technology of
freedom: of the ways and means through which the individuals-by-decree and
de jure of the liquid-modern times may be lifted to the rank of individuals-by-
choice and de facto. Or to take a leaf from Jeffrey Alexanders call to arms:
sociologys future, at least its immediate future, lies in an effort to reincarnate
and re-establish itself as cultural politics in the service of human freedom.
Id suggest that sociology has little choice but to follow the track of the
changing world; the alternative would be nothing less than loss of relevance.
But Id suggest as well that the particular no-choice quandary that we face
today should be anything but a cause to despair. Quite on the contrary. In our

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short, yet crises-and-fateful-choices-rich history, a nobler, more elevated and
morally laudable mission was never imposed on our discipline with such a
force, while being simultaneously made similarly realistic at any other of
the times which, as Hegel suggested two centuries ago, its the prime
humanities destination and perennial vocation to catch.
The liquid-modern setting casts the individuals (and it means all of us)
in the state of acute, and in all probability incurable, under-determination and
uncertainty. As the views memorized and skills acquired are poor and all too
often misleading or even treacherous guides to action, and as the available
knowledge transcends the individual capacity to assimilate, whereas its
assimilated fraction falls as a rule far short of what the understanding of the
situation (the knowledge how to go on, that is) would require the condition
of frailty, transience and contingency have become for the duration, and
perhaps for a very long time to come, the natural human habitat. And so it is
with this sort of human experience that sociology needs to engage in a
continuous dialogue.
To be sure, dialogue is a difficult art. It means engaging
conversationalists with an intention to jointly clarify the issues, rather than to
have them ones own way; to multiply voices, rather than reducing their
amount; to widen the set of possibilities, rather than aiming at a wholesale
consensus (that relic of monotheistic dreams stripped of the politically
incorrect coercion); to jointly pursue understanding, instead of aiming at the
others defeat; and all in all being animated by the wish to keep the
conversation going, rather than by desire to grind it to a halt. Mastering that
art is terribly time-consuming, though far less time-intensive as practicing it.
None of the two undertakings, neither the mastering nor the practicing
together, promise to make our lives easier. But they do promise to make our
lives more exciting and rewarding to us, as well as more useful to our fellow
humans and to transform our professional chores into a continuous and
never ending voyage of discovery.
This is at any rate what I am trying, in my own far from perfect,
experimental way, to practice.
I need to admit, however, that my view of the sociologists' vocation
does not necessarily overlap with the consensus of the profession. Dennis

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Smith has described me as an outsider through and through. It would be
dishonest of me to deny that denomination. Indeed, throughout my academic
life I did not truly belong to any school, monastic order, intellectual
camaraderie, political caucus or interest clique. I did not apply for admission
to any of them, let alone did much to deserve an invitation; nor would I be
listed by any of them at least unqualifiedly as one of us. I guess my
claustrophobia feeling as I do ill at ease in closed rooms, tempted to find
out what is on the other side of the door is incurable; I am doomed to
remain an outsider to the end, lacking as I am the indispensable qualities of
an academic insider: school loyalty, conformity to the procedure, and
readiness to abide by the school-endorsed criteria of cohesion and
consistency. And, frankly, I dont mind

Lo Peruzzo Jnior - One theme that has aroused a huge side effect is the
matter of Liquid modernity. What is your diagnostic about the time we live
in? What can we expect from humanity and from the future and what would
be the role of Education?

Zygmunt Bauman - About the last part of your question the role of
education I expressed my views in the interview given the other day to O
Globo, and there is no point in repeating myself here. So Ill limit myself here
to the issue of the diagnostic though even this in an unduly condensed
form; the issue is much too broad for arguing it fully in a brief interview.
Well, we are presently in the state of an "interregnum"; betwixt and
between a state in which we are abandoning or abandoned by, and some
new condition, not yet accomplished and so not yet open to empirical
scrutiny. We know what you are exiting and leaving behind; but we cannot
say with any degree of certainty where to are we going. Following the great
Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, I call "interregnum" a transitory state of
affairs, a state in which the old - once tested - ways of doing things do not
work any longer, or at least don't work as well as they once did, and so we
feel that "things cannot go much further as they do now" - but new effective
ways which could possibly replace them are still experimented with without a
conclusive result; they are, so to speak, still in a design stage - on a drawing

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board. We can't be sure which one of suggested ways will prove itself as right
and proper, and which will need to be abandoned having failed. In short: we
know where from we are running, but don't know where we are going to. We
are proceeding - but without clear destination.
What is more, we do not know in fact how to anticipate such a
destination. We've learned to predict the impending conditions (even that,
though, far from unerringly), for instance shifts in political preferences of an
electorate, by measuring the current "statistical trends" - which preferences
gather in force and which are losing their popularity. But all majorities start
from being tiny minorities, and as long as they remain "minoritarian", we are
inclined to dismiss them as marginal, freak and altogether insignificant. Until,
that is, they surprise us, turning into "the main talk of the town" or "the only
game in town"... Without much advance notice, unless spotted and betted on
by a few exquisitely perceptive and prescient people (also a tiny - often
laughable - minority among the observers). They would be however, as a
rule, recognized and admitted as such only after the fact.

Lo Peruzzo Jnior - You suggest in your book The art of Life, that the
destiny, the fatality and the circumstances that we do not choose settle a
massive part of our options. In this regard, is there any solution to live better
inside a liquid modernity?

Zygmunt Bauman - Of course it makes a lot of difference whether one is

born in a wattle and daub hut in one of about 600 favelas of Rio, or in an
elegant residence of Copacabana, Ipanema or Botafago. Being born here
rather than there, in one moment of history rather than another, must be listed
as a matter of "destiny", or irrevocable verdict of "fate". We call "destiny" or
"fate" all factors not of our own doing: factors staying out of our control but
interfering nevertheless with our wishes and intentions - and in the long run
with the itinerary of our lives. "Fate" sets the chances opened to each one of
us; but in an unequal society like ours chances opened by fate are similarly
unequal. "Fate" does not determine our life completely: it only exposes us to
different sets of choices. For some of us "fate" is kinder than for others,

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offering a wider set of options and selecting options considered to be more
attractive than it does to the others. It makes it easier to some people than it
does to others to attain social positions viewed as worthy - gratifying,
comfortable and prestigious; and it does so irrespectively of personal talents,
merits, and quality of character. No wonder the works of fate are widely seen
as unjust and unjustifiable - calling for the wrongs they visited on individual
sufferers (or categories thereof) to be corrected and compensated by society.
As you certainly know, that calling tends to be nowadays rejected or at
least questioned; the advocates to submit fate to the random caprices of
markets argue that a society offering assistance to the victims of adverse fate
does a disservice to the those whom it assists; relieving the pressures of
disadvantageous circumstances it disables the people it assists instead of
enabling. However harsh the fate, the sole salvation for its victims lies - so
they aver - in their own hard work. As the great German sociologist Ulrich
Beck summed up that idea, it is now the individuals who are told to conjure up
individual solution to socially produced worries - using their own wits, skills
and (however inadequate) resources in their command. The ideal model for
the promoters of such view is not that of an egalitarian, but "meritocratic"
society, that is one which rewards every individual member in proportion to
his or her individual achievement; let us observe that the problem of fate
radically differentiating the realistic chances of that achievement is thereby
not so much resolved, as swept under the carpet. Moreover, the
consequences of the gradual withdrawal of the social insurance against
individual misfortune tend to be nowadays exacerbated by realities of life
condition moving ever farther from implementation of meritocratic principles.
More and more people seek employment of their skills, energy and good will
in vain - while frozen, and in many cases pressed down wages no longer
protect those lucky who found jobs from poverty. In addition, access to
education - so crucial in case our "knowledge society" is wished to approach
anything like "meritocratic" model - is fast drifting presently beyond the reach
of the young who mishappen to be born into poor families. According to latest
findings, in the US for instance 74% of students attending the most
prestigious colleges come from the top-income quarter of society, but only 3%
from the bottom quarter. In a growing number of countries, the education

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system has turned into a mechanism of the extended reproduction of
privileges and deprivations.

Lo Peruzzo Jnior - Do you believe, so, that the great humanitys project -
the progress has not been accomplished and hardly will?

Zygmunt Bauman - What of people think when they pronounce the word
"progress"? In the language of our journalists and politicians "progress"
means rising of "gross domestic products" - which people worried about the
future of our already over-exploited planet would hotly contest. Managers of
our consumerists economy would describe as "progress" an increase in
demand for the goods they offer: creation of new needs and desires, whose
in-satisfaction makes more people unhappy (in the language of the trade, this
is known as "opening new markets"). These and such-like "measures" or
"indices" of "progress" are however examples of what Alfred North Whitehead
dubbed almost hundred years ago "essentially contested concepts". They are
contested, because they are more or less awkward (and all too often one-
sided) attempts to translate the modern intention of making the world more
hospitable to human desires, ambitions and dreams into a concrete and
measurable moves which people who design them, practice and administer
believe (or wish us to believe in order to reassert their own raison d'tre,
importance and authority) would bring humanity closer to such objective.
None of those translations thus far suggested have however found
uncontroversial and earned a fully and truly universal acceptance; the link
between the moves on offer and the sum total of human happiness is far from
being found fully convincing. On whatever measures we focus to promote
"progress", we found neglected and jeopardized some other values no less
indispensable to human welfare and gratifying life. We experience such
dilemmas daily - when increase in our freedom shrinks our security, or -
obversely - a gain in security detracts from our freedoms...
You have called progress "the great humanity's project". If there was
ever a "project" explicitly articulated to humanity's universal acclaim or at least
by the whole of humanity implicitly supported, it was the modern promise to
deploy science and technology to increase human comfort and convenience,

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free humans from drudgery and excessive exertions, shorten the time
distance between desire and its fulfillment, and all in all make the challenges
of life easier to handle and difficulties posited by the performance of life tasks
easier to overcome. In other words: the promise to remove from human
experience whatever has been perceived at the time as inconvenient,
uncomfortable, oppressive, harassing, irritating - and all in all resented and
unwanted. "Progress" understood as a march to trouble-free life is a double-
edge sword. All too often in modern history some other people were viewed
as the cause of trouble. Native population of Americas was, let's never forget,
exterminated or confined in reserves under the banner of progress. And
modern history is far from over.

Lo Peruzzo Jnior - The relation among Economic, Politics and

Technology has aroused growing critics for dissolving human relations and
selling a precise way of achieving happiness. How do you see the public
ambience and the public institutions? What about the unique way, the choices
that every person makes?

Zygmunt Bauman - "Happiness" is another "essentially contested concept".

Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the great romantic poet, was asked at his very
advanced age whether looking back he found his life happy. He answered:
"Yes, I had very happy life. But I can't recall a single happy week". The
message of such answer is crystal clear: happy does not reside in a trouble-
free life, but in confronting, facing up to, and responding to life challenges;
happiness does not mean unproblematic life, but successful resolution of life's
problems. Goethe said also, in one of his poems, that "there is nothing as
unendurable as a long row of sunny days"...
Desire of happiness in this sense (that is, in the sense of overcoming
pain and distress of unresolved problems) seems to be un-detachable from
human mode of being. This human proclivity is keenly and to a great effect
capitalized on by the consumerist industry promising its targeted clients to
"take the waiting out of wanting" - offering a short-cut to the state of
happiness, an instant happiness, "happiness now" attainable on shop
shelves. Pursuit of happiness, we are indoctrinated by the current ambience

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fed, aided and abetted by continuous stream of obtrusive commercials, leads
through the shops; pared to its bones, the kind of happiness promoted and
propagated in our society of consumers, is shopping. Whatever brand of
goods they advertise and sell, shops assume the status of pharmacies,
supplying medicines for all and any of life's ailments. Facing up to life's
challenges is cumbersome, requiring much energy, good will, skill and effort?
Don't worry - each commercial tacitly suggests - find the right shop with right
products and they will do it for you; not only will they take away the trouble
that haunts and torments you, but also the hard labour which taking it away
would otherwise demand.
I believe that such model of happiness and the recipe for its successful
pursuit are misleading; they are also potentially harmful and dangerous - both
for the human desire of happiness of for the sustainability of the planet, our
shared home.

Lo Peruzzo Jnior - It is noticeable that your thought has repercuted a wide

number of Brazilian readers and authors. I am grateful with the interview and
very pleased for our conversation. In conclusion, I would like you to point out
how big are the challenges for our contemporary societys paths.

Zygmunt Bauman - We have already discussed, albeit briefly, some of the

most conspicuous and vexing among them - as the worry about the
sustainability of the planet caused by over-consumption of its resources, or
the exponential growth of social inequality generated by the concentration of
wealth and income and the narrowing uppermost sector of social hierarchy.
The list of the challenges yearning to be urgently confronted looks however
like lengthening instead of shortening. The end of road (if at all conceivable)
is not yet in sight. I can only repeat once more what I obsessively reiterate:
we live in the time of interregnum - we know or believe to know what are we
running from, but we can only guess (fear or hope) what we are running to.

A Entrevista foi realizada em 18 de agosto de 2015.

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Lo Peruzzo Jnior
Professor of philosophy at School of Education and Humanities at Pontifcia
Universidade Catlica do Paran PUCPR and FAE Centro Universitrio;
Editor of Aurora Journal of Philosophy.

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