Even the sixty-word sentences are worth reading. \u201cWe live twice\u201d he says, first living and then narrating the experience, a possible \u201cticket to eternity\u201d (10). Unless we leave it too late and become a medically cultivated \u201ccabbage,\u201d as he appeared to fear for himself (15). At times, though, the multiple cross-references to famous philosophers can grate. Wittgenstein\u2019s lion roars (incomprehensively) outside Plato\u2019s cave, the dark from which the owl of Minerva emerges (at dusk); all in the space of three pages (25-28).<\/p>\n
Stronger criticisms can be made. For all of young Zygmunt\u2019s love of a schoolchild\u2019s atlas, he never let his imagination wander far from Europe. Had he looked more closely towards Australasia, the Americas, or Africa, he might not have suggested that: \u201cWe, the Jews, supplied the world with the archetype of suffering; perhaps in that lies our greatest contribution to striving after moral perfection\u201d (156); or written of \u201cKolyma [in North East Siberia] and Dachau, those laboratories in which the limits of human enslavement and dehumanisation had been investigated\u2026 [or that] Survivor\u2019s syndrome is hereditary; each generation passes on the poisoned fruits of the bygone martyrdom\u201d (163-164). This may be true, but if so, the vast majority of the world\u2019s population would still suffer from the syndrome \u2013 not merely the self-declared European archetypes.<\/p>\n
One final oddity is how much more men feature than women, although Rosa Luxemburg is praised towards the end, and Bauman\u2019s wife and daughters feature often. Perhaps there were too few women of note to write about? Or perhaps Zygmunt was concentrating too much on competing with the other boys? This book\u2019s existence is as much a labour of love by women as by the man: Katarzyna Bartoszy\u0144ska who first translated it; Paulina Bo\u017cek and Leigh Mueller who assisted later in that task; Anna Sfard who undertook the final corrections to the writing; and Izabela Wagner who edited the work into a collection.<\/p>\n
Just as when he was a soldier, it is men Bauman attacks most effectively, including, as mentioned above, some of the most useful, terse and apposite words written on the veneration of Slavoj \u017di\u017eek. Bauman may have failed to install enough hope in his own life, but several years after his death, he is well placed to warn against despair and ignorance, both today and into the future. The value of his books will not last an eternity \u2013 but they will continue to be read long enough. My Life in Fragments is among the best of them.<\/p>\n
—-<\/p>\n
My Life in Fragments presents the life and thought of the late sociologist Zygmunt Bauman through an assemblage of letters he wrote to his daughters. Combining biography and broader reflections on the pressing issues of our time, this edited collection provides a sharp, rewarding insight into one of recent history\u2019s most renowned thinkers. My Life in Fragments. Zygmunt Bauman, edited by Izabela Wagner and translated from the Polish by Katarzyna Bartoszy\u0144ska, Paulina Bo\u017cek and Leigh Mueller. Polity. 2023.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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