Book, Postmodernity's Malaise, O[LS]

Zygmunt Bauman makes a vigorous reflection on modern anxieties, establishing direct links with Freud's famous Civilization and its Discontents. For the sociologist, the mark of postmodernity is the "will to freedom" itself, a principle that directly opposes the security designed around a stable social life, or order, as Freud thought. With his eclectic and original analyses, the author also addresses, among other topics, the ideas of Richard Rorty, Michel Foucault and Anthony Giddens. While other postmodern theorists point out the fragmentation of contemporary culture and the subject, Bauman deals with the universalization of fear or losses derived from the exchange of order for the search for freedom.