Zygmunt Bauman was both an outsider of Western modernity and one of its foremost interpreters. He was an exemplary figure in twentieth-century intellectual work on exile who experienced both Nazi and Soviet forms of totalitarianism.

The first work to draw extensively on Bauman's personal archive, Zygmunt Bauman and the West argues that the distinctive social thought that sprang from Bauman's lived experiences of exile amounts to a sustained, sophisticated, and hitherto unappreciated problematization of Eurocentrism and the West. Through an overview of the intellectual's thought and his contribution to sociology, Jack Palmer explores Bauman's experience and interpretation of the West and seeks to understand his work in a broader context, outside of the Eurocentric environment from which it was born.

Intervening in a resurgent sociology of intellectuals, Zygmunt Bauman and the West re-evaluates the place of the West in social and political thought.

The thought and career of a twentieth-century public intellectual in exile.

About the Author
Jack Palmer is senior lecturer at Leeds Trinity University and honorary research fellow at the Bauman Institute, University of Leeds.

Reviews

"This is an immensely erudite and compellingly written book. Palmer convincingly shows how Bauman's ambivalent positioning and intellectual engagement with respect to the West help account for the interpretation of non-Western historical experiences. Palmer's reading against the grain is a highly original and inspiring account." Manuela Boatca, University of Freiburg and author of Global Inequalities beyond Occidentalism

"This superb book, by a leading expert on Bauman, is a major contribution to our understanding of his life and thought. Palmer's detailed knowledge of the tragedies of colonialism and postcolonialism leads to a fundamental reconsideration of what is often dismissed as Bauman's Eurocentrism. We encounter a rounded picture of a Bauman who is fully aware of these and other issues and wryly self-critical." William Outhwaite, Newcastle University and co-editor of Habermas Global: The Reception History of a Work

Book Information
ISBN 9780228017691
Author Jack Palmer
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint McGill-Queen's University Press
Publisher McGill-Queen's University Press