Postmodernity and Its Discontents - Hardcover

Bauman, Zygmunt

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9780814713037: Postmodernity and Its Discontents

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814713033 ISBN 13: 9780814713037

Publisher: NYU Press, 1997

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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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From the Back Cover:

When Freud wrote his classic Civilization and its Discontents, he was concerned with repression. Modern civilization depends upon the constraint of impulse, the limiting of self expression.

Today, in the time of modernity, Bauman argues, Freud's analysis no longer holds good, if it ever did. The regulation of desire turns from an irritating necessity into an assault against individual freedom. In the postmodern era, the liberty of the individual is the overriding value, the criterion in terms of which all social rules and regulations are assessed. Postmodernity is governed by the 'will to happiness': the result, however, is a sacrificing of security.

The most prominent anxieties in our society today, Bauman shows, derive from the removal of security. The world is experienced as overwhelmingly uncertain, uncontrollable and frightening. Totalitarian politics frightened by its awesome power; the new social disorder frightens by its lack of consistency and direction. The very pursuit of individual happiness corrupts and undermines those systems of authority needed for a stable life.

This book builds imaginatively upon Bauman's earlier contributions to social theory. It consolidates his reputation as the interpreter of postmodernity. The book will appeal to second-year undergraduates and above in sociology, cultural studies, philosophy and anthropology.

About the Author:

Zygmunt Bauman is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Universities of Leeds and Warsaw.

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