This edited volume will illustrate the continuing interest in Bauman’s work through a number of chapters each dealing with the important aspects of his work and shedding light on some new angles and perspectives on his life and work. It seeks to position Bauman within the field of sociology and to provide some examples of his lasting contribution to and relevance for the discipline. Bauman’s ideas remain an important source of inspiration for many scholars and researchers working within a variety of different fields and sub-fields, appealing equally to empirical work and theoretical elaboration. This book contains ten chapters, and all chapters are devoted to the presentation and discussion of themes and ideas that were characteristic of Bauman’s way of doing and writing. The purpose of this volume – as with the other volumes published in the Anthem Press ‘Companion to Sociology’ series – is to provide a comprehensive overview of Zygmunt Bauman’s continued importance within the field of sociology and related social science disciplines.
Throughout history mankind has struggled to reconcile itself with the inescapability of its own mortality. This book explores the themes of immortality and survivalism in contemporary culture, shedding light on the varied and ingenious ways in which humans and human societies aspire to confront and deal with death, or even seek to outlive it, as it were. Bringing together theoretical and empirical work from internationally acclaimed scholars across a range of disciplines, Postmortal Society offers studies of the strategies adopted and means available in modern society for trying to ‘cheat’ death or prolong life, the status of the dead in the modern Western world, the effects of beliefs that address the terror of death in other areas of life, the ‘immortalisation’ of celebrities, the veneration of the dead in virtual worlds, symbolic immortality through work, the implications of understanding ‘immortality’ in chemical-neuronal terms, and the apparent paradox of our greater reverence for the dead in increasingly secular, capitalist societies. A fascinating collection of studies that explore humanity’s attempts to deal with its own mortality in the modern age, this book will appeal to sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers and scholars of cultural studies with interests in death and dying.
The present book is devoted to "European connections of Richard Rorty’s neopragmatism". Rorty can be connected to numerous controversies, polemics and discussions with European philosophy and within its framework, from Plato to Kant to Hegel to Habermas to Derrida. Rorty gets into European discussions with American freshness and intellectual breadth and therefore he was listened to carefully and read with great interest. His connections with European philosophical tradition are manifold, complicated and diversified; with a part of it he remains in a serious, deep controversy (Plato, Kant), with another part of it he remains in a cheerful agreement (young Hegel from Phenomenology, Nietzsche, the early Heidegger, the late Wittgenstein). It is also the case with his connections with contemporary European philosophy - apart from favorites (Derrida, Habermas) there are those he dislikes (the late Heidegger, Foucault). Rorty as a philosopher of the unprecedented erudition, in his philosophizing takes a stance towards the whole philosophy which, from our perspective of more than twenty five hundred years and Greek origins of philosophical conceptuality is European first and foremost. We refer here to a polemical context of Rorty’s writing; it gives us the possibility of showing him from the perspective of others and in comparison with others. The present book never had monographic intentions, it does not want to tell a complete story of its philosophical protagonist in the manner of a German Bildungsroman that presents its hero from the perspective of passing time, nor does it want to present the whole of Rorty’s work from a unifying viewpoint or to present particular stages of Rorty’s development (particular books), starting with the "early" Rorty, with the "medium" one to the "late" Rorty, if the first would be supposed to be Rorty until Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, the second - Rorty from this book, and the latest - Rorty from Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity onwards. The book presented here intentionally is not a monograph, hence its poetics and architecture are different. Rorty is a philosopher who is still writing, and we intended to provide his past writings with a new dimension, presenting recontextualizations and redescriptions of them in the light of what he is thinking at the moment. We have assumed here the following principle: the work consists of chapters followed by "philosophical excursuses". The former are focused on Rorty’s philosophy, the latter show his philosophy in struggles with other contemporary and past philosophers, providing a more general philosophical background. Philosophers from "excursuses" as well as Rorty’s polemics with them throw as much light to his philosophy as chapters themselves. But they show it in a slightly different, wider perspective, necessary in my view for a more general and culturally significant understanding of importance of his philosophy. Thus, heroes of the excursuses presented here are Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas and Zygmunt Bauman, as well as such great past philosophical figures as G.W.F. Hegel and Plato. Why these philosophers rather than others? First of all, due to their importance to the development of Rorty’s philosophy - by means of defining its position with reference to their philosophical settlements or by means of philosophical tensions born between them. Two factors were decisive: the role played in Rorty’s philosophy as he can see it and the role played in it as we can see it. It is rather excursuses that provide most contextual material to Rorty’s work, it is them that trace in detail his European connections. The picture that emerges from them is fascinating due to Rorty’s versatility because it is something totally different that is at stake in Rorty’s struggles for fame and immortality with Derrida (as I am trying to outline the debate here), something else it at stake in his political discussions with Lyotard, and something still else in "merely philosophical", as he calls them, debates with Habermas. Without these contextual pieces I might be afraid that the book would be dry and devoid of the cultural surrounding of postmodernity in which Rorty’s work has been written. If Rorty’s philosophy takes its life juice from controversies with European philosophy, it is hard to imagine for me to cut them off in the present work; and they are essential in my view to show the significance of Rorty’s neopragmatism, they are in tune, I hope, with the Rortyan way of practising philosophy. CONTENTS Acknowledgments (5); Introduction (7); Chapter I. Philosophy of recontextualization, recontextualization of philosophy. General remarks (37); Philosophical Excursus I. Seriousness, play, and fame (on Rorty’s Derrida) (59); Chapter II. The question of self-creation (86); Philosophical Excursus II Rorty and Lyotard, or about conversation and tragedy (104); Chapter III Anti-Platonism of Rorty’s thought (133); Philosophical Excursus III Hegel’s presence in Rorty (159); Chapter IV Rorty and literature, or about the priority of the "wisdom of the novel” to the "wisdom of philosophy" (185); Philosophical Excursus IV The picture of an ironist who is unwilling to be a liberal, and of a liberal who is unwilling to be an ironist (Foucault and Habermas) (211); Chapter V Philosophy and politics, or about a romantic and a pragmatist (238); Philosophical Excursus V Rorty, Bauman, contingency, and solidarity (257); Bibliography (289).
Many have pursued, and continue to pursue, real immortality by seeking to prolong their lives on this earth. Others pursue symbolic or proxy immortality, through children, fame or being part of something long-lasting. One can imagine these different forms of immortality as a menu of options of how to live forever: you click the one that appeals to you most and best fits your beliefs, hopes, values and worldview.
This measured and thoughtful book provides a comprehensive critical commentary on Bauman′s social theory. It explores the roots of his ideas in questions of capital and labour, and explains how these ideas flourished in Bauman′s later writings on culture, intellectuals, utopia, the holocaust, modernity and postmodernism. Bauman′s work has been wide-ranging and ambitious. This book fulfils the objective of providing an authoritative critical guide to this essential thinker.
If you could live forever, would you want to? Both a fascinating look at the history of our strive for immortality and an investigation into whether living forever is really all it’s cracked up to be. A fascinating work of popular philosophy and history that both enlightens and entertains, Stephen Cave investigates whether it just might be possible to live forever and whether we should want to. He also makes a powerful argument that it’s our very preoccupation with defying mortality that drives civilization. Central to this book is the metaphor of a mountaintop where one can find the Immortals. Since the dawn of humanity, everyone – whether they know it or not—has been trying to climb that mountain. But there are only four paths up its treacherous slope, and there have only ever been four paths. Throughout history, people have wagered everything on their choice of the correct path, and fought wars against those who’ve chosen differently. In drawing back the curtain on what compels humans to “keep on keeping on,” Cave engages the reader in a number of mind-bending thought experiments. He teases out the implications of each immortality gambit, asking, for example, how long a person would live if they did manage to acquire a perfectly disease-free body. Or what would happen if a super-being tried to round up the atomic constituents of all who’ve died in order to resurrect them. Or what our loved ones would really be doing in heaven if it does exist. We’re confronted with a series of brain-rattling questions: What would happen if tomorrow humanity discovered that there is no life but this one? Would people continue to please their boss, vie for the title of Year’s Best Salesman? Would three-hundred-year projects still get started? If the four paths up the Mount of the Immortals lead nowhere—if there is no getting up to the summit—is there still reason to live? And can civilization survive? Immortality is a deeply satisfying book, as optimistic about the human condition as it is insightful about the true arc of history.
"Written by some of the leading thinkers in the field, the book is an excellent resource for longstanding and contemporary issues in cultural theory. Comprehensive and well-written." - David Oswell, Goldsmiths College This timely volume provides a framework for understanding the cultural turn in terms of the classical legacy, contemporary cultural theory and cultural analysis. It reveals the significance of Marxist humanism, Georg Simmel, the Frankfurt School, Stuart Hall and the Birmingham School, Giddens, Bauman, Foucault, Bourdieu and Baudrillard. Readers receive a dazzling, critical survey of some of the primary figures in the field. However, the book is much more than a Rough Guide tour through the ′great figures′ in the field. Through an analysis of specific problems, such as transculturalism, transnationalsim, feminism, popular music and cultural citizenship, it demonstrates the relevance of cultural sociology in elucidating some of the key questions of our time.
With intense and violent portrayals of death becoming ever more common on television and in cinema and the growth of death-centric movies, series, texts, songs, and video clips attracting a wide and enthusiastic global reception, we might well ask whether death has ceased to be a taboo. What makes thanatic themes so desirable in popular culture? Do representations of the macabre and gore perpetuate or sublimate violent desires? Has contemporary popular culture removed our unease with death? Can social media help us cope with our mortality, or can music and art present death as an aesthetic phenomenon? This volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the discussion of the social, cultural, aesthetic, and theoretical aspects of the ways in which popular culture understands, represents, and manages death, bringing together contributions from around the world focused on television, cinema, popular literature, social media and the internet, art, music, and advertising.