Zygmunt Bauman had already grabbed my attention when I read his phenomenal work, Liquid Modernity; now I've picked up one of his more celebrated works, Modernity and the Holocaust. Bauman's text exhibits profound insight, critical analysis and development, along with amazing accessibility (which helps initiate a broad readership into very complex ideas). Below are just a few passages from this text:
Regarding bureaucracy and the suppression of moral capacity.
"Dehumanization is inextricably related to the most essential, rationalizing tendency of modern bureaucracy... Once effectively dehumanized, and hence cancelled as potential subjects of moral demands, human objects of bureaucratic task-performance are viewed with ethical indifference..."(Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 103)
And, on survivor's guilt and the indissolubility of moral responsibility, Bauman writes:
"One story, however, carved itself into my brain deeply and haunted me for many years. This was a story of a saintly sage who met a beggar on the road while traveling with a donkey loaded with sackfuls of food. The beggar asked for something to eat. 'Wait,' said the sage, 'I must first untie the sacks.' Before he finished the unpacking, however, the long hunger took its toll and the beggar died. Then the sage started his prayer: 'Punish me, o Lord, as I failed to save the life of my fellow man!'...
.... Even if one knows that not much more could have been done practically to save the victims of the Holocaust (at least not without additional, and probably formidable, costs), this does not mean that moral qualms can be put to sleep. Nor does it mean that a moral person's feeling of shame is unfounded (even if its irrationality in terms of self-preservation can be, indeed, easily proved)."(204)
This is an incredible book and I highly recommend it for anyone of us who are still caught up in the myths of modernity: progress, rationality, objectivity, and the supremacy of science. He argues that modernity is the necessary condition, though not the determinative factor, for the Holocaust to have taken place. In fact, the Holocaust is a demonstration of modernity's power, not modernity's failure. He exposes contemporary racism as a thoroughly modern project (even though there were prejudices and forms of segregation in the past, racism as it is understood today has its roots in the modern project). The emergence of racism coupled with guided by the principles of progress and the belief of social engineering lead to frightening results. It was the The modern bureaucratic machine--in its division of labor, suppression of morality capacities, and cost-effecitve rationality--that enabled the Holocaust enlist "normal" citizen into carrying out the final solution. Again, this book comes with my approval.
