Zygmunt Bauman is one of the greatest sociologists of the 20th and 21st centuries. His works on "modernity" and "postmodernity" have far-reaching influence. This Polish-British thinker who leads Europe has spent most of his life using "certainty" and "uncertainty" to explore the human condition. His social identity also shuttles between the two: he is a soldier, an officer, a teacher, He is also a persecuted person, an immigrant and a thinker. He has been moving around the world for most of his life; but his inner "conscience" is unwavering.
Zygmunt Bauman
In 2017, Bauman passed away at the age of 91. The Chinese translation of "Transforming Familiarity into Strangeness", his last conversation before his death, was published in 2023 and has won enthusiastic praise from domestic readers. Following the popularity of the book "Work, Consumerism and the New Poor" in 2021, Bauman's dialogue continues to arouse readers' attention and response to the current reality. Bauman uses his own real experience and interaction with the reality of the world as the source of his thoughts, and responds to "flowing reality" with vivid thoughts with physical sensitivity.
Recently, Douban Reading teamed up with Nanjing University Press·Watchman to specially invite Ma Ling, a professor at Fudan University and a well-known book reviewer, Wang Liqiu, the translator of "Turning the Familiar into Strangeness", and Luo Dong, a book reviewer and media person. Three people with different research fields and personalities The distinguished scholar was a guest in the online live broadcast room and brought us an in-depth conversation on "Thinkers' Response to the Present". The following is a shorthand transcript of this conversation.
Book cover of "Transforming the Familiar into Strangeness"
1. "Flow" and "Strangers" in Modern Society
Luo Dong: "Everything is flowing", this is what Bauman summarized in the 1980s and 1990s (later ) expression of modern people’s living conditions. We will feel that some things that we believed in or were relatively strong in the past seem to have become very fragile now, and things that were predictable before seem to have become unpredictable now. We have been strangers to each other since then, losing fixed relationships and all traditional ways of connecting. Based on Bauman’s thinking, how did “strangers” arise in modern society? Teacher Ma, what do you think?
Ma Ling: I have only read some of Bauman's 58 books. I am not an expert on Bauman, only a senior reader. But I made a very interesting discovery. There is a connection and a core issue among the several books that I am interested in. For example, "Legislators and Interpreters" in 1987, "Modernity and the Holocaust" in 1989, "Work, Consumerism and the New Poor" in 1998, and especially a book in 2000 called "Liquid Modernity" Sex", and his last book "Nostalgic Utopia" in 2017. On the surface, these books look like hammers and sticks, but if you look deeper, you will find that there is actually a core issue running through his vast works - "fluid modernity". Our topic tonight is called "The Age of Mobility", so this is also the topic we will discuss tonight.
The reason why I won’t talk about “strangeness” first and start with “flow” is because I think “strangeness” is a phenomenon and “flow” is the essence. Moreover, "flow" itself is a metaphor. I especially like this passage in the "Communist Manifesto":
"Unless the bourgeoisie continuously revolutionizes the tools of production, and thus the relations of production, and thus all social relations, it cannot To survive. On the contrary, maintaining the old mode of production intact was the primary condition for the survival of all industrial classes in the past. The continuous transformation of production, the constant turbulence of all social relations, and the eternal instability and change are assets. The class era is different from all previous eras. All fixed ancient relationships and the corresponding venerable concepts and opinions have been eliminated. All newly formed relationships have become obsolete before they can be fixed. All fixed relationships Everything disappeared, everything sacred was desecrated. People finally had to look at their status in life and their mutual relationships with a calm eye.”
In other words, Marx has pointed out that since entering modern society, everything that is fixed has disappeared, so unfixedness, uncertainty, instability, or what we call fluidity, itself is a characteristic of modern society.
i In fact, I asked myself a question, is mobility good? The beautiful society that the West has always imagined, they call it a "free society", is actually composed of two dimensions - because I studied Western history in the past, so From a Western historical perspective, we will find that the pursuit of mobility has always been a common desire of mankind - the mobility of this "free society" includes two dimensions, a horizontal dimension and a vertical dimension.
What is horizontal Dimension? It is the span of geographical space. For example, I was originally from Harbin, and then I came to Shanghai. If I wanted to become a new Shanghainese, I needed to have a household registration. How to obtain my household registration? I left the station as a postdoctoral fellow. Passed With such an institutional arrangement, I can get a Shanghai household registration. Another example is the Chinese immigrants to the United States. This horizontal flow, the crossing of geographical space, is the first dimension. I believe that all of us are curious, Most people like to go to the horizon and always feel like they are living somewhere else, far away.
The second dimension is called vertical mobility, which is the transformation of social classes. For example, I am an ordinary child from an ordinary family. Through my I have struggled personally to climb the social ladder. Now, I am a doctoral supervisor in a university, and my social status has obviously been upgraded to a certain extent. For another example, the elevator of the Peace Hotel in "Flowers" is actually a kind of status ups and downs. Metaphorically, A Bao was able to become Bao Zong, which means that he succeeded in this vertical flow. Of course, he finally came down again and changed from Bao Zong to A Bao again. Our Chinese philosophy can accept all this, We call it "a dragon that can go up and down."
From this perspective, I think "mobility" itself is good, because mobility brings freedom, opportunities, and new life experiences. , even for introverts, mobility can also escape relationships and certain social obligations, which is quite a good thing. Generally speaking, without capital, labor force, and large-scale frequent mobility of goods, how could our modern society come to be? ? So mobility must have its good side.
Luo Dong: Teacher Wang, what do you understand about "fluid modernity"?
Wang Liqiu: I would like to explain "fluid modernity" from an academic perspective "Sex". First, we have to explain "modernity". For Bauman, "modernity" is related to the tendency of human development, which is to try to plan and design people through rationality.
For example, a nation-state will Shaping into its citizens, this is a typical way of shaping. In his view, the previous stage of modernity is called the solid stage of modernity, mainly because the power to shape people is fixed, and it is often controlled by a country. This can be achieved through power agencies, or bureaucrats with great resources. "Fluid modernity" is different from the past. These powerful fixed shaping forces seem to be gone. On the contrary, the shaping of members is fluid, or to use Foucault's words, it does not happen at a macro level. Maybe it's something happening at a micro level.
Luo Dong: Since mobility is already an essential feature of modern society, why did Bauman mention "fluid modernity" again? Can you two talk about the differences between "strangers" in modern society and "strangers" in traditional or early modern times?
Wang Liqiu: What kind of existence does Bauman define a stranger? He believes that a stranger is a person who we cannot place in a definite position within our existing cognitive framework. We cannot accurately name or classify him. To us, he is an existence with blurred boundaries.
In ancient times, the image of strangers was not obvious, because everyone was in a fixed society, mobility was not as frequent as it is now, and strangers rarely appeared. Later, as the borders of the country were established, the figure of the stranger became even more prominent.To the nation-state, he is not from our country, he is a stranger. In this stage of solid modernity, everyone’s expectation for strangers is that they will always disappear and will not coexist with us. But with the frequent exchanges in the world and the collapse of various boundaries, everyone will find that everything around them is flowing, and each of us has become a stranger. The people around us are probably strangers to us, and we are not sure whether they share the same cognitive framework, the same moral stance, and the same aesthetic stance as us. We cannot assume that we have the same views and actions in a familiar community as before.
Liquid modernity is not a completely welcoming attitude towards strangers. The attitudes of the left and right in the West towards immigrants are typical modern people’s views on strangers. The left embraces pluralism and wants to respect every small cultural community whose existence increases diversity. For them, the presence of strangers is appreciated, and to some extent this is related to social class. Left-wingers in Western society are usually of higher class, and of course these people will not feel the impact of strangers on them. In this case, it is easier for them to understand the presence of strangers. The right wing is the side that we often see rejecting immigrants. In Bauman's view, because the entire framework has become fluid now, many things are out of our control, and a person's freedom is related to his ability. In the West, people who adopt a hostile or disgusting attitude towards strangers are often people from the lower class. The situation of mobility makes the situation of these people at the bottom more unstable, and their sense of security is getting weaker and weaker. In their eyes, strangers become people who occupy their living space.
But both the left and the right have accepted that strangers are something that exists and should exist for a long time, and even an element that can be exploited. So the stranger in modern society has had such an image change.
Ma Ling: At the turn of the 5th century, there was a very important background, which was called "deregulation" in global media management. Countries began to build "information highways", which was the first peak of Internet investment. The impact of the Internet on mankind was huge.
The Internet, especially the later mobile Internet, has truly enabled us to enter a media-based society, where time and space have been redefined by the media. The use of the Internet has deepened the process of globalization. Not only has national borders been broken, but the distinction between private space and public space has also been broken down. Therefore, mobility plays a central role in the process of contemporary society. I think that what we call "defamiliarization" and "strangers" is a by-product of "liquid modernity". Nowadays, a large number of our interpersonal relationships are disembodied and absent. Most of them are short encounters without deep friendship.
Regarding the issue of "strangers", Bauman mentioned a passage in the book. He said, "In my opinion, the community has been replaced by the Internet. You come into contact with many more people every day than you actually meet. You connect with them through email, tweets, or like pages, but you don't feel them physically, you belong to the community, the network belongs to you, the community considers you its property, and your network barely notices you existence."
2. Love in our era: Why is love becoming more and more difficult?
Luo Dong: is between "flow" and "strangeness". I guess the point that everyone is most interested in is actually what Teacher Ma has just mentioned for us: about love. Today we both long for love but are afraid of being hurt; we both long for attention and are afraid of being restrained. In the interview book "Transforming the Familiar into the Strange", the first question Bauman was asked was about love. As a thinker who lived most of his life in the 20th century, Bauman's marriage and love experience also has many shadows of love in the classical sense, such as "sacrifice", "firmness" and "lasting". He believes that true love is "'me and you' each other" The elusive yet irresistible joy of companionship and becoming one.”I don’t know how the two teachers think about this issue, especially Teacher Ma. The students he comes into contact with may have experienced several generations of changes, and they may also sense some changes in people’s views on love.
Ma Ling: There are indeed changes in . There is a topic on Douban: Do you feel that love is getting harder and harder? I once browsed it, and there were nearly 1,000 posts and 2 million views. I have also seen the heartfelt expressions of many Dou friends. They are really both longing for and afraid. In Bauman's book, the first chapter is "Choosing a Partner: Why We Are Losing the Ability to Love." Bauman himself was very happily married. His first wife was Yanina Levinson, and their marriage lasted for 61 years until Yanina's death. I particularly envy their love. They fell in love at first sight. Bowman proposed to each other within nine days of knowing each other. There were many romantic moments in their lives. For example, when his wife became ill after childbirth, Bowman took care of the children and his wife. After decades of marriage, Bowman still insisted on writing love letters to his wife. And one thing is very important. Cook for your wife. This may be beyond everyone's imagination. He said, "Love means putting selfishness second." Love requires two people to negotiate, support and complement each other.
Wang Liqiu: What Bauman appreciates is classical love, or the kind of love before it is eroded by the way of thinking. Modern people have a set of fixed needs when looking for love. These needs are very clear. Find the parameters according to the needs, and once you find something, it will be suitable. When it doesn't meet my needs, I throw it away because it is no longer suitable. This kind of understanding is obviously not a connection between people. Bauman would emphasize that people are not just a combination of attributes, and we must treat people as human beings. Therefore, to restore the ability to love, or return to an ideal state, don’t just look at indicators or efficient satisfaction. A truly good relationship should not be about efficiency, but about the satisfaction of a single need.
Ma Ling: I would like to add that I happened to read two books "Cold Intimacy" and "The End of Love" by French sociologist Iloise last year. She reminded us to pay attention to the fact that love is attached to our body. For example, when we fall in love, our palms will sweat, our heart will beat wildly, our fingers will be intertwined, we will stutter, and we will burst into tears. These are the depths of our body. Engagement in the performance of emotional experiences. I don’t think love is necessarily romantic. I think Austen has solved a very important issue. What are “reason and emotion” and “pride and prejudice”? Really good love must have a balance between reason and emotion, and let go of arrogance and prejudice. We have to let ourselves achieve such a balance.
3. Bauman’s sociological research method, “turning the familiar into the unfamiliar”?
Luo Dong: Teacher Wang provided us with some reminders about love, and Teacher Ma encouraged us to have the courage to find love. The emergence of this "liquid love" is inseparable from the birth of modern man. We enter Bauman from the concept of love, and then see his thinking on various other issues. What runs through it all is the method of "turning the familiar into the unfamiliar", advocating that we look beyond the familiar and break things that are taken for granted. What do you think of Bauman’s talk of “turning the familiar into the unfamiliar”?
Ma Ling: I want to talk about the fundamentals of Bauman’s specialness in the entire framework of sociology. Sociology itself began in the mid-19th century. In our current disciplinary system, we will find a category called "social science". The scientificization of sociology was once a very hot trend. Scientific sociology pursues empirical evidence and value neutrality, and takes formalization, rationalization, and precision as the criteria for evaluation.
Bauman is different. He believes that this kind of sociology is originally to meet the requirements of solid modernity and pursue clarity and accuracy in order to implement control and fixation, but he does not want to stay in the tradition.So we will find that in the second half of the 20th century, as written in the book "Social Theory in the Age", there are actually two groups of sociologists at war. One group wants to retain grand, correct, and comprehensive theories, and is eager to explain Patterns of social formation and change. Another group, including Bauman, abandoned the so-called concepts of objectivity and value neutrality, and then vigorously advocated social theories with moral/political purposes. For example, feminism belongs to this context. This book also gives a lot of space to various post-theories such as identity politics theory and new world order theory. I noticed that in this book, the author placed Bauman in the "postmodern turn". I think this is quite illustrative: sociology has become the plural sociology, which has also become "society". students".
I think it has also drawn a lot of nourishment from anthropology and other disciplines, such as the current research on female e-commerce anchors, emotional labor, knowledge labor, digital nomads... Researchers have stepped into the game and made no secret of their positions. This is the identity of the “interpreter,” what Bauman calls “from legislator to interpreter.” So when we read Bauman's book, what we see are living examples, phenomena happening around us. So when describing this phenomenon, "turning familiarity into strangeness" is because "defamiliarization technique" is a very basic function of literature. Understanding it from a literary perspective, Bauman allows sociology and literature and art to coexist in a fruitful interaction. Bauman writes fluently in this regard, and he is particularly good at using metaphors. "Making the familiar strange" and "turning the strange into familiar" are actually two sides of the same coin, a two-way interaction. Bauman uses such a set of literary methods to talk about it, which is why his work is so good. It is under the elucidation of this specific literary situation that sociological imagination can truly have warmth.
Wang Liqiu: When Bowman came to teach at the University of Leeds in the UK in 1971, he gave a famous inaugural speech, which was a typical example of turning the unfamiliar into the familiar. After the rise of positivism in sociology at that time, anti-positivists were criticizing positivism, including Bauman, a scholar who entered the field very early. He proposed the anti-positivist trend that seems new to us now, but in fact It has happened countless times in history.
As Teacher Ma mentioned, he will gradually emphasize the relationship between humanities, especially literature, and society, because he feels that sociology studies people. People have both a subjective inner experience and an external part. He would emphasize that people are complex things, with a passive, regular, and unfree side, and a creative, unregulated side. In his view, this goes back and forth in sociology, sometimes emphasizing the passivity of people and obeying laws; sometimes emphasizing the subjective and creative side of people. People will gradually discover that these trends are just one of the back and forth movements that have occurred countless times before. When he puts this into the dialogue of past experience, he will find that this thing is not new. Maybe we are in the current culture and facing our modern environment, we will think this is a new thing, but when you really talk to the accumulated experience of mankind, you will find that it is not so strange, it is very likely It is one of the various possibilities that have existed historically outside the mainstream.
4. Bauman, Chizuru Ueno, and Han Bingzhe, responding to current thinkers
Luo Dong: Bauman published dozens of books throughout his life. Although they were translated into many languages and spread around the world, he laughed at himself: " My voice is like a cry in the wilderness, but no one hears me.” Bauman seems to be an "outsider" in sociology in a sense. Interestingly, he used this identity to influence social thought and social science in the 20th century. He is not an ivory tower person limited to a certain discipline. "People do not live within the boundaries of a discipline." According to him, he is certainly not an intellectual in the Renaissance sense (encyclopedia style).Does and how does the specialization and institutionalization of disciplines restrict intellectuals from thinking about public issues? In an age when everything is fluid and segmented, do we need “encyclopedic” thinkers?
Wang Liqiu: There is no objection to the current academic division of . It is the development of a modern architecture. But the bad thing about the way of thinking in various disciplines is that it cuts apart all aspects of a problem, including which ones are sociological, which are literary, and which are historical. But when the scholar's research interest was initially aroused, it was not just a certain aspect of his single subject that he focused on. He may have wanted to fully understand this thing. Therefore, many scholars are also trying to transcend the limitations of disciplines, but it is difficult to say how effective they can be.
Why are the speeches of some experts who communicate between academia and the public criticized? Why does it feel so unrealistic? Because they lack understanding or attention to the audience, you cannot say that some experts’ speeches are wrong. It may make sense when placed in their narrow professional field, but when applied to the public, their words may be just a kind of nonsense. Serious offense. The first priority of any public scholarship in social sciences is to teach the public how to think in a social science way from the perspective of the audience. Therefore, the position of speaking is first of all the position of the public, not the position of experts or managers. position.
There may be some misunderstandings about public sociology in China. Professional knowledge is packaged and sold as paid knowledge that is easy to accept, and they think it is public. But in my opinion, publicity may be an important direction of efforts to overcome disciplinary boundaries. This publicity must be from the perspective of the audience, rather than being instilled from the top down. Bauman did a good job at this point, and he was able to resonate because he started from a popular standpoint.
Ma Ling: I have a lot of emotions about , because I jumped from literature to history, and then from history to journalism and communication. It was mainly driven by curiosity, but I have deep feelings about the things behind China’s academic system. . Why are so many big names unable to write supplement articles and unwilling to write more? The reason is that supplement articles do not count towards your KPI or your academic achievements. Recently I participated in a book selection event, and a scholar published a book. In fact, the topic could be written in a more popular way, but the author's expression was too academic. I judged at a glance that this might be a major project of the National Social Science Fund. The final results of the project were as expected. Scholars are limited to the discipline system, and they have no choice.
just mentioned that some experts have made irresponsible remarks. As a professor at the School of Journalism, I can say very responsibly that the media must bear a great responsibility for the current stigmatization of scholars and experts. Today's media only selects a few sentences that can stimulate the public as headlines and quotes them out of context, so intellectuals will gradually become less willing to be public intellectuals.
Back to Bauman, about 70% of Bauman's 58 books were written after his retirement. After retirement, he let himself go. There is no longer any peer review, and there is no need to write citations and annotations in papers. In this case, he can speak freely. By the way, I particularly like the novel "Stoner". It describes the life of a very plain and principled intellectual. Such a life should be a portrayal of most intellectuals in China.
Luo Dong: Bauman's dialogue basically runs through his lifelong research focus. In the past two years, Bauman has been highly exposed in China. In 1998, "Work, Consumerism and the New Poor" was launched in the English world. , re-translated and published in the Chinese world in 2021. This book reflects the real problems of contemporary people. Observing Douban’s popular lists in the past two years, authors with such responsiveness, such as Chizuru Ueno and Han Bingzhe, have had their (his) works widely discussed.What do the two think of their willingness and skill to respond to the moment?
Wang Liqiu: The question of is a bit difficult. I think, in fact, Bowman is relatively lucky. Part of his ability to get out of the industry was related to a series of journals at that time. The publishing house gave him great preferential treatment, so he had a platform to do whatever he wanted. Publish many books that do not require peer review. But publishing this kind of book actually requires some institutional support. He happened to find some journals that were willing to publish his articles and were committed to interdisciplinary work, as well as some publishers that were committed to bringing the academic community closer to the public. At the same time, I believe that he did not know that his book would definitely be popular in China. Just like the book "Work, Consumerism and the New Poor" you mentioned just now, it was published once before, but it suddenly became popular later. It's a bit unpredictable, probably because he was writing about the issues of public concern he was facing at the time.
My expectation for scholars who want to step out of academia is that they go back to the starting point of their research and just face the phenomenon or the social reality itself and talk about it, without adding a bunch of disciplinary restrictions in advance. If you want to cross over, first of all, don’t use this limitation to trap yourself. Whichever issue you focus on, you should really look at that issue. Then, like Bauman, communicate with the subjects of your research.
Ma Ling: Let’s talk about liquidity today. The explosion of the people we just mentioned is also an emerging phenomenon brought about by this flow. In fact, when Chizuru Ueno was first introduced to China, no one read it at all, because the small book she introduced at that time was not very academic and very thin. It only had about 7.1 points on Douban. It took a few years for her to become popular. Yes, so does Bowman.
I read Mill's "On Liberty", and what impressed me most was one of his metaphors. He said that truth is a long-distance race, and it takes a long time to run. It may not be rediscovered until it meets the needs of that era. The fire started. So I think that the thinkers we talked about may all belong to such a phenomenon, which is a kind of luck, but it is also an inevitable one.
I have read "Transparent Society" by Han Bingzhe, and each chapter in it involves a different philosopher. If there are readers who are interested in them and follow the pictures to read more professional books by these philosophers, it is also Han Bingzhe’s contribution, and his works have legitimacy.
Therefore, whether it is our overall theoretical community or the book world, I hold a liquid pluralistic point of view. I think it is best for everyone to complement each other and not to undermine each other. Different types of books have different types of impact and have different types of audiences, so we don’t have to insist on uniformity. If we insist on uniformity, it will be the so-called solid modernity. Maintaining a flexible space between the two is what I hope to see.
