Postmodernity and Its Discontents

Bauman has written a challenging analysis of the limitations of both modernism and postmodernism...Highly recommended.--J. H. Barker, ChoiceIf, 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 Discontentsexplores 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.

ISBN 0814713041   DEWEY 303.4 ISBN13 9780814713044 (What's this?)   Pages 272 Publisher New York University Press   Volumes 1 Imprint NEW YORK UNIV PR   Weight (grammes) 336 Format Paperback   Published in New York Publication date 01 Feb 1997   Height (mm) 230 Library of Congress HM73.B295 19   Width (mm) 156

		Introduction: Discontents - Modern and Postmodern		1
1		The Dream of Purity		5
2		The Making and Unmaking of Strangers		17
3		The Strangers of the Consumer Era: from the Welfare State to Prison		35
4		Morality Begins at Home: or the Rocky Road to Justice		46
5		Parvenu and Pariah: the Heroes and Victims of Modernity		71
6		Tourists and Vagabonds: the Heroes and Victims of Postmodernity		83
7		Postmodern Art, or the Impossibility of the Avant-garde		95
8		The Meaning of Art and the Art of Meaning		103
9		On Truth, Fiction and Uncertainty		112
10		Culture as Consumer Co-operative		127
11		On the Postmodern Redeployment of Sex: Foucault's History of Sexuality Revisited		141
12		Immortality, Postmodern Version		152
13		Postmodern Religion?		165
14		On Communitarianism and Human Freedom, or How to Square the Circle		186
		Afterword: The Last Word - and it Belongs to Freedom		199
		Notes		209
		Index		218

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