The epilogue of liquid Modernity (2000; FCE, 2003), a book that achieved celebrity in his last years, is an essay where he reflects on his vocation with the title of "on writing; on writing sociology". Opens with an epigraph from Theodor W. Adorno that is a statement of principles: "The need in thinking is what makes us think". But lucidly, Bauman learned that in both sociologist that need thinking had no limits. In their interviews, that according to the testimonies, enjoyed, came to explain their role (sure soon there will be a volume with some that did). Gonzalo Suárez (The World) declared in November of last year: "My role as a thinker is not to point out what is a happy society, and what laws you have to pass to get to tha t place, but to interpret the society, find out what is hiding behind the rules that met its citizens, to discover the tacit agreements, and automatic mechanisms that convert the words into concrete actions. In short, help the citizens understand what is happening to make their own decisions. Yes, I understand that it is difficult to find a meaning to life, but is less difficult if you know how to work the reality that if you’re one of the ignorant.
The idea of "discovery," Bauman finds in the literature. In the beginning of "on writing; on writing sociology," explains that in The art of the novel, from the idea of Jan Skácel that the poet will go on and find the verses that "they were always there, in the depths", Milan Kundera argues that the poet, writing, "breaks down the wall" that hides them. The thinker Polish then makes an analogy between the poet and historian: "the task of the poet is not different from the task of the historian, that discover in invent: the historian, like the poet, reveals, in situations always new, human possibilities that were previously hidden" (instead of "historian", there is no problem to write "sociologist"). Bauman not discovered the metaphor of liquidity ex nihilo. The expression "liquid modernity" is as a synonym of "post-modernism", a concept with which I was in disagreement because he felt that there is still no h istorical perspective to say that modernity has come to an end. A thinker who had great influence in the fine-tuning of their ideas was the German Ulrich Beck, who was the first to realize the process of change in which we are living. Beck coined the term "second modernity" to define it. It was found that there were "categories zombies" and "institutions of zombies", which "are dead and still alive", as the family, class and neighborhood, according to notes Bauman in the preface to liquid Modernity. In opposition to the adjective "pessimistic" that certain readers will have endilgado, Bauman does not believe that liquid modernity is eternal. I explained Gonzalo Suárez: "I usually use the concept of interregnum, of the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci. The old way of doing things no longer works, but we have not yet found the new way of working. So there is a gap between the rules that no longer serve and that we have yet to imagine." And to the q uestion expressed in the duration of this interregnum, he replied: "that’s Less time than it took our ancestors to create a sharp object with which to penetrate other substances. And, even so, it took tens of thousands of years to invent a hole into which you toss a stick and build a axe. I think that we will take less. But even so, it will be more time than people would like". With this statement I was asking atendiéramos the difference between the individual time and historical time.
Here it should be recalled that the address of Bauman on the liquidity began in the field of history and to remember is that precisely since the birth of modernity was a "principle of liquefaction". Ironically, the currency was flowing from its origins but even that communist revolutionaries were, children of their time, was "replace the solid old ones for new solid". Liquid modernity has led to their ultimate consequences the principle of liquefaction". Precariousness, uncertainty, transience, volatility of the relationships are traits that define it, and one of the aspects that have led to this state is the freedom to be excessive. The human being arrived to the point where you don’t know what to do with so much freedom, and that is one of the major points to discuss. Another moment of capitalist development, the central element that also gives rise to the entry of this new era, is the economic element. Yes, we are all a commodity. But if we do not have the quali ties necessary to be well paid, the economic uncertainty generated by the loss of values. In romantic relationships there is a predominant precarious because it prefers to escape to fight together to secure a future.
sociology, the liquidity that broke the scientific foundations that made it strong. In Thesociety besieged (2002), Bauman noted: "The sociology aimed to know its object in order to predict unambiguously which direction would tend to move: that way, you could determine what to do if you wanted to move it forward in the right direction." This safety has been lost and corresponds to him, as individuals, reimaginarse, to reinvent itself. And clear that Bauman made that the sociological imagination is kept alive. To foresee is not to prophesy, but knowing how to interpret the present. A matter that troubled him at the end of his days was the question of migrants that is in his book Strangers knocking on the door (2016), where he talks about Donald Trump. He explains that he was gaining acceptance, because a good portion of the citizens need strong men because current politicians are not. Your response to Just Carranco (The Vanguradia) by which he triumphed is clear: "Are the factors that explain the phenomenon, but there is still one more factor that contributed significantly to the victory of Donald Trump: he perceived very intelligently the spirit of the times, that their competitors failed to understand, and cleverly presented itself as an outsider of the political elite, fighting against the establishment as a whole, and not just against one or another of their divisions in the party".
despite everything that’s been said about their breakup, as the temporary games of Borges, the time continues to be seen as an arrow that goes forward. "Second modernity", "postmodernity" or "liquid modernity" are concepts that arise as a denomination by the fact that in human history there is always a moment of uncertainty that causes fear. But that’s where it should appear in its full capacity the human spirit. The uncertainty is the wall that every thinker should help you to break, because there are the epiphanies, the paths to follow. To say that Zygmunt Bauman was a man of another era is due to that possessed strong values and, above all, he was a man consistent. Transcending political positions (although no shortage of cynics izquierdosos of today who want to take their side), was above all a questioner, because I believed, with Castoriadis, that "the society is ill if it stops questioning". For him, all sociology (let us add, of all science) is c ompromised because you should bet on the man with all his imperfections: "The task of sociology is to deal with elections (of human beings) are truly free, and that they continue to be so increasingly, for the entire duration of humanity."
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