I still vividly remember what fewer and fewer people, as time goes by, can and do: the names that Nikita Khrushchev, having decided to expose and publicly decry and condemn the crimes of the Soviet regime to prevent their repetition, gave to the moral blindness and inhumanity which was until then its mark: he called […]
Trump: A Quick Fix For Existential Anxiety
Amongst the “liberal left”, in the UK and USA, there’s a major response to the Donald Trump’s electoral success: fear. “This is a moment of great peril”, “Donald Trump’s victory challenges the western democratic model”; he will “carry us into a different political era, a post-neoliberal, post-end-of-history politics, than any other imaginable president…”; “the election […]
No More Walls In Europe: Tear Them Down!
Professor Bauman, it seems like new walls are rising, again, in Europe. The reasons politicians push for the decision to build these walls – either real or “bureaucratic” – refer to the issues of migration and security. How do you judge what is happening? What are the risks in this rush to “securitization” of the […]
A Few Comments On The Mis-imagined War On Terrorism
Has “the heart of Europe” been targeted with success, as so many opinion makers (for instance, a most authoritative and widely read The New York Times columnist, Roger Cohen, in his entry of 22 March) insinuated after the most recent terrorist assault in Brussels? Or should we condemn and avoid this symbolism so appreciated by […]
Floating Insecurity Searching For An Anchor
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines “security” as “condition of being protected from or not exposed to danger”; but, at the same time, as “something which makes safe; a protection, guard, defence”: this means, as one of those not common (yet not uncommon either) terms that presume/hint/suggest/ imply, an organic and so once and for […]
The Migration Panic And Its (Mis)uses
TV news, newspaper headlines, political speeches and tweets used to deliver foci and outlets for public anxieties and fears are currently overflowing with references to the “migration crisis” – ostensibly overwhelming Europe and portending the collapse and demise of the way of life we know, practice and cherish. That crisis is at present a sort […]
The Charlie Hebdo Attack And What It Reveals About Society
You went through the tragedies of the 20th century – two wars, Shoah, Stalinism. What’s the specificity of the islamic extremist threat we’re facing today, in your view? Political assassination is as old as humanity and the chances that it will be dead before humanity dies are dim. Violence is an un-detachable companion of inter-human antagonisms […]
The European Elections, Politics And Inequality
Throughout most of our electronic exchanges we tackle the issue of the “self” as such, and its “production” as such, concentrating on the features all selves and all cases of their production share, and only occasionally mentioning their diversities. But “selves” come in many shapes and colours, and so do the settings, mechanisms, procedures of […]
The Changing Nature Of Work And Agency In Times Of Interregnum
Henning Meyer has asked my opinion on the big societal challenges likely to characterize the year we’ve just entered. There are, no doubt, many – perhaps uncountable – unresolved issues that will demand close watching during the coming year and press us for bold decisions and fateful steps. They are too numerous and most of […]
Europe Is Trapped Between Power and Politics: By Zygmunt Bauman
That the disease which brought the European Union into the intensive-care ward and has kept it there since, for quite a few years, is best diagnosed as a ‘democratic deficit’ is fast turning into a commonplace. Indeed, it is taken increasingly for granted and is hardly ever seriously questioned. Some observers and analysts ascribe the […]
Does The Richness Of The Few Benefit Us All? By Zygmunt Bauman
A most recent study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at the United Nations University reports that the richest 1% of adult humans alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the total world wealth. The bottom half of the […]
Politics, the Good Society and ‘Westphalian Sovereignty’
Yong June, the creator and editor-in-chief of Indigo, one of the most ambitious, iconoclastic and lively periodicals dedicated to the critical scrutiny of the present-day realities and in particular to the issue of regaining the lost control over human condition, pressed me to sum up my view of the reasons for which such control has […]
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