Zygmunt Bauman's sociology of aesthetic knowledge

Abstract

As a well-known neo-Marxist critical theorist from Eastern Europe, Zygmunt Bauman continues reflecting on aesthetic issues. On the basis of sociology of knowledge, especially Antonio Gramsci's theory of intellectuals, he establishes the intimate relation between this knowledge and aesthetic autonomy and develops the understanding of aesthetic modernity. He deeply explores the transformation from the aesthetic legislators in modernity to interpreters in postmodernity. It is obvious that there is some continuity in his whole theory from the 1960s to the new century. The continuity is evident from the perspective of sociology of knowledge, especially of aesthetic knowledge. With the critical sociology of knowledge, semantic analysis and cultural anthropology, Bauman provides a new paradigm for contemporary aesthetics and a new version of critical theory in his over sixty of years academic life.