Utopianism in the Work of Zygmunt Bauman - Sociologi - Aalborg ...

However, also a third option is apparently available where utopianism, perhaps
in a somewhat untraditional fashion, can be seen as something immanent in re-
ality, as an alternative and parallel path not chosen or discovered, something
not yet realised but already present although either suppressed or repressed by
the powers that be. 3 Utopianism understood in this third sense permeates most
of Bauman’s work from the early publications on socialism in the Soviet satel-
lite states and its denial of diversity and dissent and suppression of human het-
erogeneity (Bauman 1966a, 1966b, 1976a, 1976b) to the latest pieces on the
capitalist catapulted ‘liquid modernity’ and globalisation in which new forms of
social stratification and individual isolation emerge alongside and often as a
continuation of the old (Bauman 1998a, 1998b, 2000a, 2001a, 2001b, 2002a,
2003). Some sort of politically or more precisely morally motivated utopianism
has been a major leitmotif in his more than a couple of dozen books published
in English since the early 1970’s although it has always remained shrouded in a
scientific sociological discourse, however soft and compassionate, dealing with
very tangible social structures and real phenomena. Despite this, it is a passion-
ate utopianism but never pathetic.
From Utopian Communism via Utopian Socialism to Critical
Utopian Humanism
The aforementioned particular and indeed peculiar utopian aspect has been part
and parcel of Bauman’s writings from the early years as a ‘creative’ or ‘or-
ganic’ intellectual in State Socialist Poland to his later years as a ‘free-floating’
intellectual and interpreter in the capitalist and consumerist West (Morawski
1998:35). One could therefore also ponder whether his utopianism did not
originally stem from his desire to escape the enforced conformity of State So-
cialism? Moreover, the reason why it has persisted throughout the years even
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