Dogs Bark, the Carnival Moves On… Revisiting Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust

Abstract

Modernity and the Holocaust is now thirty years old. How should we respond to the book, its controversy, and its history or context? In this essay I offer three steps as a way into this labyrinth. First, I review the core claims of Bauman’s book (1989). Second, I use my four-volume edited collection of essays on his work (2002) as a decade check on its reception. Third, the new volume, Revisiting Modernity and the Holocaust: Heritage, Dilemmas, Extensions (2022) is brought into play as a third optic or time slice. I conclude that the book is a classic, which means we should still read it and use it as a marker, but also that the debate has out of necessity moved on. As Bauman used to say, “The dogs bark, the carnival moves on”.