Thinking in Dark Times with the Transdisciplinary Legacy of Zygmunt Bauman’s Work
The Bauman Institute and The Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History (CentreCATH) at the UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS announce an international conference to to examine the intellectual and political legacy of the sociological thinker and cultural theorist ZYGMUNT BAUMAN (1925-2017).
‘We live in times of interregnum… There is a change: something dies, something else is being born. The old effective ways of acting are no longer working – and the new ones are not working yet.’
Without direction, fluid and in a state of suspension – this is today’s world according to Zygmunt Bauman, the sociologist who preferred to identify himself as ‘a chronicler’ of contemporary reality. In the dark—and some would say crooked—mirror we find in his work, the world appears an insecure and mercurial place. Today, a mere eighteen months after his death, we find critical inspiration in the telling diagnoses of Bauman’s cultural hermeneutics. His extensive writings are more apt and prescient than ever. In this world of relentless flux—liquid modernityaffecting every aspect of social and subjective experience, ethics, political imagination and resistance—Bauman’s ideas offer an island of resolute engagement and thought. This conference wishes to revisit, elaborate, and crucially to extend this intellectual and political archive. Taking Bauman’s re-vision of contemporary social realities as a point of departure, the participants of this conference will re-examine — critically but also generously, in order to go on — the many questions Bauman asked, tried to answer, and imbued on the way with new and sometimes shocking insights.