Towards a Theory of Counter-Modernity: Rethinking Zygmunt Bauman’s Holocaust Writings

Abstract

This article defends the normative legitimacy of modernity from postmodern attempts to implicate modernity in oppressive social practices; Zygmunt Bauman’s Holocaust writings are an extreme example of such attempts. To discredit modernity Bauman renders the Holocaust a rational enterprise analogous to a modern factory system, dispassionately perpetrated by banal bureaucrats, such as Eichmann. Following Bauman, the identification of the Holocaust with modern mass production has become a standard trope of mainstream sociology, culminating in its identification with McDonald’s. However, this obscures the sadistic brutality of the Holocaust, the ideological zeal of perpetrators and the counter-modern norms that drove it. Although Bauman is widely considered a progressive thinker, his Holocaust writings bear the stamp of Heidegger’s regressive critique of modernity. A theory of counter-modernity not only provides a more accurate account of the Holocaust; it also restores the legitimacy of modern norms upon which a progressive critique of genocide rests.