Notes on:
Bauman, Z. (1992) Mortality,
Immortality and Other Life Strategies.
Oxford: Polity Press
Dave Harris
There is a constant presence of death in normal
social rituals. Death is considered to be an
absolute other, something unimaginable and
therefore it often appears in metaphors.
Death is seen as the nothingness opposing active
perceptions (2). My death is not knowable
because it is unimaginable without a me.
There is no consolation to be found in reason
because we cannot unknow that we die.
Culture is produced by a desire for the
suppression of this knowledge, it transcends and
is permanent. Anomic suicide arises when
culture ceases to work.
Culture makes death meaningful, a route for
survival and immortality. Death raises and
mocks the meaning of life but leaves this space
for culture. Mortality makes us create, and
it appears everywhere [this is partly a denial of
the sufficiency of the usual sociological studies
of death]. What we need is some effort to
excavate, to do a psychoanalysis of the collective
unconscious, to see social institutions as the
sediments of processes set in motion by the need
to cope with mortality and repress the truth, to
make it creative. This is an example of how
a biological fact can become a cultural artefact,
a life strategy (9). Life strategies promise
a kind of immortality, but they can lead to
conflict and stratification of their 'core
content' (10): these represent core existential
concerns, but they are also culturally specific
and lead to social differences.
There are implications for attempts to define
differences between modernity and post
modernity. In modernist societies, there is
a tendency to deconstruct and familiarize the
notion of mortality, while in post modern
societies the same is done for
immortality. Life strategies are
traceable from social configurations and they
produce daily patterns in social life. There
is however a tendency to idealize: for that
matter, the notions of modernity and post
modernity are also idealizations.
Chapter one
We know that we know. Knowledge is
objectifiable, and it exists despite our
will. Death defies knowledge, it is
unthinkable and therefore it threatens the power
of thoughts. It involves the humiliation of
reason. For this reason, death needs to be
covered up by the irrational. This sometimes
takes the form of the disbelief in our own
death. This belief must have collective
supports, because death produces social anxiety as
well as social solutions.
We are aware that we are individuals in a system
which predates us. For Freud, death could be
seen as a return to stasis. There is a link
between thanatos and eros in nature (22).
Culture operates within this boundary to resolve
the 'pivotal absurdity of the human predicament'
(23), but death remains as an essence, as one of
the 'prime facts'. We can analyze this both
at the level of total culture and particular
attitudes or practices [linked as is language and
parole?].
For example there are some particular and
expedient practices that: (a) exclude the dead,
ghettoise them or hand them over to professionals;
(b) deny the finality of death, by stressing the
collective immortality of the species or being,
seeing life is just a phase, understanding
individual immortality through a social or
economic framework; (c) offering various
combinations of these approaches, for example when
the Nazis combined a notion of volk with
the worship of individual heroes, seeing death as
a sacrifice—generally, collective ideologies like
this are on the wane though; (d) pursue
individualistic expressions of love, seeing
individuals as repositories for some notion of a
transcendental self. The problem with the
last one is that no one actual individual can
represent the meaning of life like this, leading
to an endless search for a true soulmate.
The actual soulmates are also clearly mortal and
human as well. Nevertheless we can find
these traces in patterns of marriage, and sex also
indicates the survival of the species even though
individuals die [here and elsewhere there are some
astonishing generalisations about the actual
patterns of marriage or relationships, 29].
The focus on individuals offers a form of limited
transcendence [the parallel is breaking records in
athletics!]: the focus increases our capacity to
live in the present, but they also zero in on the
body.
Knowledge of death is the foundation of culture
[sic] (31). Our awareness of the ticking
clock lends value to our precarious unique
creations [a number of sources are cited including
Borges' Labyrinths]. Our
survival provides us with a constant game,
necessarily involving others as well as self
preservation—we need to outlive others, or kill be
killed, expressed in various cultural
guises. This sense is sharpened by social
settings and socially managed, as in the familial
constraints on the struggle for autonomy in
Oedipus. The body is the final enemy and
limit though, both as an object and as a means of
carrying on the struggle. There also some
paradoxes such as survivor guilt, where I live but
lose meaning if you die (37). As with all
other ambivalences, such guilt becomes the target
of culture and a number of social
differentiations—between us and them for example
We need to survive for others in our inner
circle. Levinas (41 F) argues that this
'being for' is the basis of all moral order, since
it is always present. It is the very basis
of subjectivity which contains notions of ethics
and responsibility. It pre-exists the
self. It is pre-logical. An ethical
impulse is what grounds me [sounds like a
philosophical version of 'hailing', 44].
Consciousness of the other develops later.
Objectification can break these bonds of
responsibility, and we can lose the other and
ourselves and become open to contingency
again. Once we question this relationship it
begins to cool and lose its sacred force. It
is already lost or threatened by modern thought,
but the impulse is still detectable at the heart
of basic solidarity which spontaneously arises
here and there: this is the real basis of society
not a contract or the rule of law.
Modern societies see these primal obligations as
oppressive (49) compared to free choice. But
what free choice now promises is meaninglessness
and the void. All relationships become
provisional. It all ends with the lonely
self and an eventual lonely and unsharable death.
Chapter two
I see my death in the eyes of others and this
means I need to project immortality at
others. This should produce a collective
annulment of the individual's demise, and is the
basis of funeral rites or collective
remembrances. Participating in these rituals
guarantees that you will be remembered as
well. Rituals deny social death (52-53).
This collective and social dimension require
social management. Rituals display social
inequality. This has led some people to want
to control their future memory, in cases where 'a
structuration capacity… extends beyond
death' (54). This requires the selective
retrieval of the past, through stressing a
lineage, for example, or by reinventing a past.
The processes are like the ability to define
things as durable/transient/rubbish.
'Durable' conveys immortality, but also depends on
the role of brokers, or institutions which grade
performances. Values are also important,
especially eternal ones. 'Professional
immortality brokers' (59) like scribes or
intellectuals are required to attempt to bind
future generations to these values. Their efforts
turn on prolonging conversations beyond the death
of individuals—discourse tames time.
The case is like Plato claiming that his essences
were timeless as opposed to mere opinions:
philosophy generally then becomes a question of
dealing with the immortal. Obviously, only a
few intellectuals and philosophers can do this and
there is a struggle over the right to rule.
This helps explain the subsequent development of
modern intellectuals. But Plato originated
the metanarrative which establishes all the other
narratives (64) which are all devoted to the
attempt to bind knowledge to immortality to
power. The ability to contemplate these
matters is founded in earthly privilege and still
depends on it.
Bourdieu makes this point in defining the high
aesthetic in opposition to the popular, but there
is concern for immortality as well. Barthes
has made the same point, that intellectual
distinctions are never neutral, but rather express
a value, always dealing with rules and exceptions
(66). Intellectuals gain their individuality
at the expense of others, focus on essences at the
expense of the impure, make a thought immortal
rather than simply located in the present.
The same lies behind the denial of the mundane
when discussing art, or the fear of
objectification which will produce the new
mundane. There is also a constant tension
present in works and traditions with the existing
political order. We can see in Adorno and
Horkheimer a concern to avoid incorporation, at
the expense of practical involvement: ideas would
have to be compromised to survive in the present
and therefore lose their immortality (70).
[Rancière detects the same interest in Marx's
concerns to make Capital a work of
art].
There is currently no way to be sure that thinkers
have got the balance right. The strategy of
the avant-garde is to seek immortality by
inverting the values of the present (73).
Agreement with the bourgeoisie is to be feared,
even though the market triumphed in the end
anyway. Philosophical withdrawal from the
world is a similar process, and this includes
deconstruction and the eclipse of individual
subjectivity so there can be no individual
(im)mortality. This is the 'postmodern
nirvana' (77).
Are there no intellectuals any more like those who
once nobly sought to leave behind the world in
order to find the Absolute? There is just no
demand for them these days [!] The modern mind is
too 'departmentalized' [a phrase of Adorno's in Minima
Moralia], there is too much penetration of
commercialism and of the notion of contract.
Escape looks like posturing. Universal
intellectuals are in decline and have been
replaced with professionals and experts
(80). Localized expertise can survive only
in local bureaucracies. Some intellectuals
still try to claim a general authority, for
example by seeking notoriety, or the kind of
immortality offered by screens or books.
This is recognized to be a temporary solution, but
it helps assuage fear [and here the discussion
turns towards themes of the origin of the
spectacle, the market for instant ideas and
retorts, rhetorical games and the role of the mass
media—all of which affect intellectuals].
There are now even fashions in thought, offering a
transient durability. These are supported by
an 'intensification of tribal - like allegiances'
(85). Rewards appear as fame or
notoriety. There is a role played by 'paid
propagandists' or agents. It is even
possible to organize a fall or a disgrace as a
publicity stunt. However, everyone
eventually slides into non existence. Fame
is a deconstructed [operationalized] immortality
(87).
Chapter three
Life is riddled with choices and uncertainties,
and this can lead to a search for some master
idea. There are no natural guarantees for
our wish to survive, leading to perpetual
dissatisfaction, the chasing of happiness, the
control of dissatisfaction, anger and
futility. We need social [and
operationalized] goals and loyalties. Once
religion or philosophy played this role
[Schopenhauer was particularly useful, Bauman
thinks], but these have been undermined by
restless modernity, and the questions about
fundamentals have actually been prompted by social
theorists (92). As a result, meaning and
identity are now to be accomplished, something
profane rather than sacred, in the face of an
'avalanche of doubts' (93). Even death now
also involves pain and a descent into the
ridiculous.
What was once unexpected is now normal, producing
new levels of insecurity. Life has become a
game, contingent, and as a result, death has
become terrifying and '"wild"'. It was
always feared as something random or illogical,
something horrible lurking beneath the surface, or
fate before which we were helpless. But then
death was unavoidable, accepted and well-known,
unable to be manipulated and so it didn't really
offer a [n existential] challenge [there were
fewer signs of individualism in those days
too]. With the rise of individualism,
communal ties were seen as matters of error and
constraint.
The state emerged as the new universal [with a
massification thesis hinted at 99]. Rational
action dominates, identities were to be
administered through education and culture.
New forms of state power appeared through
specialization and expertise, the 'dictatorship of
the professoriate' (100). Masses and elites
resulted. Durkheim was wrong to think that
the new individualism would turn into a new form
of solidarity. The mass is now responsible
for itself, urged to seek its own meanings, and
this limits its possibilities to go for
immortality. We had to find a collective
option in the idea that we belong to an immortal
species [not very comforting?].
Foucault on Panopticon, Weber on legitimation, and
Parsons on the central value system all help to
establish the myth of society as having its own
existence, with compliance to it as a functional
necessity, for example in nationalism. This
can bind members, and the generation of conflicts
always results in enemies and threats and
therefore new forms of the sacred, such as 'the
soil and the dead' (106). This can provide a
fixed point to be pursued by each individual, even
a feeling of being chosen. These are
'bonding affinities' rather than actual
solidarities, however. Nationalism is more
active than the old ideas of race but is really 'a
racism of the intellectuals. Obversely,
racism is the nationalism of the masses' (109).
Obviously, nationalism needs to be constructed and
defended. It has to have both sacred and
profane elements. Since it faces constant
complexity, it must be a constant project.
In modernity it can take the form of a denial of
the authority of the past, or a version of the
future as unfulfilled emancipation. This
produces the idea of politics as a project of
cancelling difference in the name of unity
(111--12) but there are always new differences and
divisions, new practices. Constant vigilance
is required, and the project is never actually
fulfilled: indeed it is self defeating. And
yet it is needed, producing themes in popular
education and socialization. A monopoly of
state power is required. There are no
'unreflective self perpetuating communities of
belonging' (115).
National survival obviously takes place at the
expense of the others. National enemies are
seen as enemies of universality, as when Aryans
was seen as representatives of the
universal. There are obviously struggles
over claims to universality, requiring
rationalizations like theories of the untermensch,
or in a more polite form, of
underdevelopment. Possessing a superior
technology can be seen as representing superior
values, something more universal.
Colonization or European globalization becomes the
universalization of history.
We find the same processes operating on a smaller
scale too, projects to rewrite history, denying
voices—'claiming immortality in
retrospect'(123). Some [artistic or
intellectual] individuals succeed in claiming
universality despite their isolation in national
systems, leading to the ' endemic mistrust of
intellectuals' among national elites. The
masses can't follow this individual route, and are
cemented into collective strategies: the appeal is
to become a member of a mighty group if you can't
be a mighty individual—hence the appeal of
nationalism, common notions of self sacrifice, and
the resentment of aliens (126). Social
groups can take on a life of their own, by
reference to past sacrifices, for example, hence
'It is death that turns it into a symbol of the
group's immortality' (127). There are only
group possibilities for most people, which only
increases the modern fear of death as the absence
of communion. This permeates life itself and
explains why, for example, war is more
meaningful than peace: death can be 'easier than
life' (128).
Chapter four
Elias has developed an argument about civilization
as involving an increased sense of shame,
producing sanctions such as punishment or
embarrassment. Death is also a social exit,
but it is a private and meaningless one. It
is the end of coping, something abnormal and
certain. It represents the failure of
resourcefulness and therefore is a matter of
shame. Death is now deconstructed but it has
not been abolished, just made meaningless (131), a
matter of garbage or waste.
Modernity promised mastery over nature, a drive
towards emancipation. It was always arrogant
and contradictory and death offered its first
major scandal and eventually a final
challenge. Death appears as the last relic
of unregulated fate. In modernist societies
there is shame and silence about it, or sometimes
fantasies about it as in horror comics
(134-5). We feel inadequate in the face of
it, leading to 'public callousness and private
squeamishness' (136). We refuse the
spectacle of death, we hospitalize those who are
polluting us by dying. We console ourselves
with analytic deconstruction, seeing death as
something personally passive, or the result of
something beyond our control that kills. It
involves personal guilt. It is a sign of
impotence. We construct myths of contingency
or avoidability of deaths, or promise ourselves to
avoid death in the future. We are constantly
fighting against these contingencies producing a
daily nightmare, as in the moral panics over
cigarettes. We look for technical solutions
to metaphysical problems. We live in a
'continuous present', worrying about our health,
maintaining a constant vigilance and accepting our
own responsibility for our death.
Yet even science and rationality cannot avoid
death: as a result, we wrap it in magic and
irrationality [maybe this is what medical science
actually does for us]. As medical care is
costly, it is stratified, as is the social
treatment of death [Sudnow's study is
cited,144]. We are disappointed at the
failure to remedy this, and tend to think it was
ever thus [similar anxieties were around in 1909,
apparently, 147, seeing urban degeneration as
responsible]. This coincides with the
medicalization of our worries, specially when we
compare medical practice to the 'savagery'of
native peoples (149). We see matters of
health and death as metaphors for the body
politic. Our own degeneration, indicated
through various floating signifiers, is
increasingly pinned on others, or objectified, and
we think this makes it subject to action.
We are able to rationalize death in various ways
(152) as an attempt to restore rational
action. The attempt to rationalize death is
the heart of rationalization more generally, as a
'sine qua non accompaniment of
modernity' (154). We attempt to exclusively
categorize all threats to minimise our anxiety,
leading to an interest in 'races', the growth of
hygiene, with increasing hysteria at the
realization of failure, moves to kill the diseased
as a pro-life activity, various symbolic moral
panics such as the outrage at boundary crossings,
conspiracy theories, or notions of threats
within. These can take on cultural or tribal
forms as in campaigns against immigrants.
They must always be accompanied by hysterical talk
ups [plausible, but ruined by daft assertions such
as 'It is the specifically modern project of
deconstructing mortality which… infuses
modern society with its… Genocidal drive
that lurks just beneath the surface' (160)].
Chapter five
Modernity can be seen as a war against
constraints, hoping that reason will triumph and
problems solved, taking an instrumental stance to
nature, as in Lyotard's metanarratives . The
future is seen as something perfect, and the
present is to be sacrificed for the future.
Future bliss is decomposed in terms of particular
gains. The whole project is now 'liquidized'
in Lyotard's terms, both dissolved and merged with
only symbolic gains as in the achievements of
science. Perhaps the future has arrived and
can be found in the hedonistic present? We
do have many more satisfactions available, but
they are ephemeral—'Immortality is here—but not
here to stay' (164). The original modernist
project meant things were connected at the
collective and individual level, that all paths
lead upwards (the 'connexity' principle, 165).
Now, postmodern nomads wander to unconnected
places. The self remains the task, as the
moderns thought, but not as a project or a
pilgrimage. We only have momentary
identities. In this, we see a resemblance to
the archaic world and Buddhism (168), especially
in terms of notions of the continuous present—and
postmodernists and Buddhists claim to be equally
capable of comprehending the eternal as
well. As a results, the old anxieties about
immortality are now redundant, or at least seen as
a displaced project. Nothing can be done
forever, nor does it need to be done, knowledge
will soon be redundant, the notion of a career
will vanish, possessions will be an embarrassment,
and lifelong partners will leave.
Now everyone can make history and be
recorded. There is a proliferation of
histories, a broadening of chances and
opportunities, perhaps too much of a
broadening. Democratization and
trivialization go together [Bauman's example is
the popularity of the quiz]. Opportunities
are still managed by brokers though, advertising
men or promoters. They manage the balance
between anonymity and prominence, the postmodern
versions of mortality and immortality.
It easy to get attention and come to prominence,
but impossible to stay there, producing the need
for constant stream of mini targets. No loss
is seen as irretrievable. Even death itself
is only temporary, a transition. Culture
shows themes of constant abandonment, recycling,
montage or repetition. What is on offer is a
commercial version of immortality for all, where
quality yields to quantity. Modern music
shows this, it is deliberately synthesized rather
than recorded [what?]. Repetition as the key
to immortality. Computerization and the
denial of authorship has produced a new kind of
value. Reason is threatened, especially that
reason which aims to separate the real from the
non real, the object for misrepresentation, and to
attempt to pierce the opacity of signifiers.
Signifiers now float, making distinctions and
separations like these impossible.
Dissimulation is also impossible if there is no
real. Meaning is no longer a matter of
something hidden at the core of things, and things
only represent themselves. There is no
outside of the text [first argued in 1916 by Man
Ray, 184]
The present can be seen as an 'open space
time'. Everything takes on the qualities of
a drama or performance indifferent to
reality. Laws are replaced by rules and
these can be chosen. However, everyone must
play, since there is nothing outside, no finality,
and so no mortality, nothing that determines 'a
soft pliable game'. The consolation is that
there might be 'no security, but no impotence
either' (187).
So we can see postmodernism as another kind of
life strategy. It dissolves the future in
the present, slices time into moments and
familiarizes us with mortality, as a kind of
inoculation (188). We chase novelty in
consumption, but things disappear before
death. Allegiances to things like place are
denied. Nothing is for life, and durability
is seen as boredom, age as obsolescence
(189). There are no metanarratives and no
consequences. Immortality has become
deconstructed.
Of course the strategy stratifies too, just like
all the others. Now the issue is the quality
of the present life. Identity is seen as a
prison, or constraint, or a restless nomadic and
anxious chase. Everyone has the right to
choose an identity, but this leaves only to new
dependencies, on advertising or on other things
that reassure us. Of course, these agents
cannot pose as authorities, but need to seduce us,
be alluring, within our trust. And this is
fickle, because there are cycles of trust
dependency and autonomy. There are also
desperate attempts to construct new
collectivities, imagined communities which will
lend significance. Authority now stems from
current notoriety, showing the importance of
public opinion, but this makes it exist as a
phantom not reality. We need to expand the
moment and this leads to an orgy of community
chasing (199) of football matches or
concerts. The result of our deconstructing
immortality is that we are unable to construct
life as reality.
Postscript
It is the ultimate irrationality to die for
others, yet this has become constitutive of
subjectivity, individuality and humanness (200),
because it breaks the monotony of equality of
citizenship, everything which 'is shared, copied,
nonunique' (201). The ethical self is the
only complete human, and only this can mitigate
loneliness. Togetherness based on a concern for
the other is very important, a necessary 'break in
indifference', drawing on Levinas again.
This concern is what makes my life count and
reduces my absurdity. Such significance is
unobtainable through egoism or contract.
Concern for the other is expressed in lots of
mundane actions and reasons, expressed in maxims
such as in Lukacs' recipe for love: 'try never to
be proved right'(204), or the need to love and
never even to ask for love in return, to make the
other stop needing you, to make the other free, to
die in order not to live frustrated, to die
oneself rather than let the other live 'the
shameful death of ignominy and rejection'(206), or
even to die at the fullness of love. Actions
like this can seem to express the supreme moral
stance, yet they also have undertones of
possession and mastery.
It is possible to have a calm disinterested death
for others beyond reason or calculation. It
requires an awakening from (very common) egotism
in order to help realise true selfhood as
something for-Other. Such deaths did take
place in the holocaust and the gulag. They
were heroic only because it is heroic to be human
in an inhuman world. Heroism is about causes
and values and is sometimes an excuse for the
death of others, but no normative claim is moral
if it justifies the death of others, or implies
that my respect for the other stops at the gift of
my life (210).
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