I have a degree in Sociology from Warwick University, an MA in Political Economy and a PhD in Critical Theory from Middlesex University. My teaching is in the area of social theory, modernity, social justice, cosmopolitanism and globalisation. My Phd thesis was published in 2001 by Palgrave as Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory: Marx, Habermas and Beyond. My current research interests include critical social theory, Marxism, the Holocaust, cosmopolitanism and social justice.

BA Sociology Programme Leader

My primary areas of interest are social theory and social justice.

• BA Sociology Programme

• IS1206 Thinking Sociologically
• IS1203 Globalization and Modern Britain
• IS3205 The Sociology of identity and Difference

• Towards a Theory of Countermodernity: Rethinking Zygmunt Bauman's Holocaust writings
• Remoralizing Capitalism: Rethinking Marx's Labout Theory of Self-Determination
• Goodbye Multiculturalism: Hello Cosmopolitanism?
• Multiple Modernity Theory: A Critique
• On the Status of Human Rights: Objectivism versus Culturalism

• British Sociological Association

• Marxism and Philosophy Society

Towards a Theory of Countermodernity

Rethinking Zygmunt Bauman’s Holocaust Writings

In this paper I advocate a theory of countermodernity as a corrective to postmodern attempts to render modernity responsible for oppressive social practices. To this end, I revisit Zygmunt Bauman’s influential Holocaust writings in which he argues (not altogether consistently) that modernity annuls (1) pre-modern (pre-social) morality and (2) social diversity (otherness). Having discredited modernity, Bauman restores the pre-modern (pre-social) morality whose modern annulment makes genocide possible. My criticisms of Bauman are ethical and historical. Ethical, in defending the legitimacy of modernity as the bearer normative resources (humanism, citizenship, democracy) without which a progressive critique of genocide is impossible. Historical, in arguing that the Nazis were a reactionary racist movement antithetical to modernity’s normative content. To this end, I distinguish between modernity as a progressive project and the modern world in which the formers transformation of pre-modern conditions is resisted by regressive social forces of which the Nazis were an extreme example. Refusing Jeffrey Herf’s label of reactionary modernism I argue the Nazis comprised a countermodern movement, whose capacity to mobilize modern means was only matched by their genocidal antipathy to modern ends. Having identified Jews with modern humanistic norms the Nazis sought to eradicate the latter through the eradication of the former. As such, Bauman’s reading of recent European history is not only mistaken but also places him on the wrong side of this ethical divide. In order to identify modernity with genocide Bauman renders the Holocaust a mundane practice perpetrated by banal bureaucrats and comparable to modern car production. In the process, Bauman evinces the baleful influence exerted by Martin Heidegger over postmodernism. To exorcise his reactionary ghost and restore the normative legitimacy of modernity I therefore advocate a theory of countermodernity.

Key words: the Holocaust, modernity, postmodernity, countermodernity