Abstract

“Concepts tend to outlive the historical configurations which gave them birth and infused them with meaning.” For Zygmunt Bauman, the capacity of concepts for lingering in an afterlife of obsolescence “applies in full to the case of ‘class.’”

Like Gorz's Adieux au proletariat, Bauman's latest book bids farewell to that historical subject which has shown itself to be no longer the carrier of a universal project of emancipation. In his sober but rewarding book, Bauman traces the trajectory of the concept and the reality of class from pre-history to afterlife, and provides us with a picture of late-capitalist societies that draws its inspiration from the works of Habermas, Offe and Touraine.