The U-turn of utopia – Utopia, socialism and modernity in Zygmunt Bauman’s social thought

Abstract

Zygmunt Bauman was undoubtedly one of the most prolific and renowned social theorists of the later part of the 20th and the early part of the 21st century. In his work spanning more than half a century, Bauman explored and tangled with some often overlooked topics within mainstream sociology such as freedom, the Holocaust, morality, art, immortality and utopia. In this article, the authors delineate the development of an unmistakable utopian mentality in Bauman’s writings from the early pieces concerned with socialism and culture through the acclaimed body of work dealing with modernity and postmodernity to the most recent writings investigating, for example, the rise of ‘Retrotopia’. Throughout Bauman’s work, one will discover that utopia is always present – either explicitly or implicitly – as a critique of the world ‘as it is’ and the world we uncritically take for granted. In this way, Bauman urges his readers to consider that there is always possibility for change and that we are the human motors who can make it happen.