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Among the many contributions that he has made to sociology, Zygmunt Bauman is known for his dualisms, which include modernity versus postmodernity, legislators versus interpreters and solid versus liquid modernity. He has published extensively on Communism, the Holocaust, modernity, postmodernism, bureaucracy and ethics among other topics. But there exists a fruitful ambivalence in how he can be interpreted in these and other regards. Is he claiming that the Holocaust and Communism were the result of order-seeking modernity, the final effect of so-called Enlightenment narratives? For example, regarding the Holocaust, he writes, "The Nazi vision of a harmonious, orderly, deviation-free society drew its legitimacy and attractiveness from … the century and a half of post-Enlightenment history" (Bauman 1993, p. 29). Similarly, according to Bauman, "communism was modernity's most devout, vigorous and gallant champion — pious to the point of simplicity" (Bauman 1991, p. 179). In these and other passages, it is difficult to determine whether Bauman is claiming that Nazis, Communists and other modernists were sincere disciples of an emotion-free, hyper-rational vision of the Enlightenment, or, if they were pre-tending to be sincere. This is difficult to determine because he does not raise the issue of sincerity in relation to the topics that interest him.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230290457_3

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