Critical review of Zygmunt Bauman's 'La vie en miettes'

Mark Alizart's review in artpress (March 2004) harshly criticizes Zygmunt Bauman's book 'La vie en miettes' (Éditions Le Rouergue/Chambon). Bauman, a Polish sociologist born in 1925, professor emeritus at Leeds and Tel Aviv, attempts to describe the 'contemporary experience' but delivers a string of banalities, according to Alizart. The reviewer dismisses Bauman's claims about the lack of lifelong employment, the world being less solid, culture as a 'cosmic casino' (citing Georges Steiner), and the kaleidoscopic change in bestseller lists. Alizart argues that Bauman views postmodernity only negatively, as a failure of modernism, echoing the Frankfurt School's 'dialectic of Enlightenment' already present in Bauman's 'Modernity and the Holocaust' (2002). The review concludes that Bauman offers nothing new, and that readers would prefer to hear from those who actually participate in contemporary experience.