The war against forgetfulness: Sociological lessons from Bauman’s writings on European Jewry

Abstract

This paper argues against assigning Zygmunt Bauman to the category of a ‘white’, ‘European’ theorist and the tendency to speak of an undifferentiated ‘Eurocentrism’. To argue this, I return to a set of articles by Bauman which reflected on the history of European Jewry. These encourage us to place Bauman in a historical and social context in which he is best identified as emerging from the racialized and classed politics of East European Jewry. Bauman traces how this group were made the outsiders of the assimilatory project of West European Jewry then, as Jewish socialists, were victims of the political anti-Semitism of communist regimes. Not only does this encourages us to be critical of the claims that he spoke from an elite ‘white European’ position, it also has further lessons for sociology which, in its own ‘war against forgetfulness’, has tended to impose simplistic racialized and political categories onto theorists.

Whiteness, Judaism and the challenge of the postcolonial critique: A response to Rattansi

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I wish to start by extending my thanks to Ali Rattansi for engaging with, and responding to, my article 'The War Against Forgetfulness: Sociological Lessons from Bauman's Writings on European Jewry' (Dawson, 2020) and to Peter Beilharz as Editor of Thesis Eleven for providing space for our debate.I must confess, though, that I was somewhat confused upon reading Rattansi's response. The reason for this is that Rattansi seems to imagine my article is intended to be an extended critique of his book Bauman and Contemporary Sociology: A Critical Analysis (Rattansi, 2017).

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“…I wish to start by extending my thanks to Ali Rattansi for engaging with, and responding to, my article 'The War Against Forgetfulness: Sociological Lessons from Bauman's Writings on European Jewry' (Dawson, 2020) and to Peter Beilharz as Editor of Thesis Eleven for providing space for our debate.…”