Zygmunt Bauman Modernity and the Holocaust

This chapter focuses on Zygmunt Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust. Bauman first discusses how sociology saw and dismissed the Holocaust. Sociologists called it an example of ‘untamed innate human aggressiveness’; a ‘privatization’, the parochial experience of Jews alone; simply and callously a matter between Jews and antisemites. Bauman is troubled by these reductionist discussions. He sees the Holocaust as an ultimately human, not inhuman, act. As such, it is fundamentally social, not asocial. As an essentially human act, it is repeatable. The Holocaust set the stage for modern genocide in this century. Bauman then attempts to address the questions raised by the Holocaust. He describes the Holocaust as a system where rationality and ethics point in opposite directions, and humanity is the loser.