Retrotopia 1st Edition

The book is very approachable and pertinent. There are so many routes in here for future investigations it is unreal. So much "hits home" is here is is hard to know where to begin.

Genial

As all Bauman wrotte.

“Retrotopia” by Zygmunt Bauman is the final book by the late, great sociologist whose passing in 2017 at age 91 represented a huge loss for humanity. Professor Bauman was a brave survivor of fascism, communism and capitalism who worked tirelessly for the future that humanity deserves. This masterpiece demonstrates that Professor Bauman’s thinking remained on point, ingenious and timely - up to the very end of his life.Professor Bauman draws on the great thinkers of the past including Thomas More, Thomas Hobbes and Philippe van Parijs to ponder the idea of human progress over the centuries. However, Professor Bauman contends that today, growing inequality has disillusioned ordinary people. Instead of imagining an utopian future, people have retreated into the narcissism of their private lives; where an imagined past “Retrotopia” fills the void of a lost community.Of course, Professor Bauman understands that demagogues have emerged to prey on the insecurities of the many. The value of Professor Bauman’s writing pertains to how he deconstructs the uneven social relations that drives class conflict in our time. Through his astute analysis, we realize that utopia can be ours if we want it; once we have the courage to accept everyone in the human family on equal terms. It’s a compelling, sincere and powerful closing to a book – and a life – that is eminently worthy of the reader’s thought, reflection and action.I highly recommend this outstanding book to everyone.

I can't recommend this word salad of a book, despite it sharing the same title as JM Greer's excellent novel. The author seems more intent on impressing the reader with his use of words, rather than actually conveying ideas.

I'm so very grateful to have this book and author come to my attention. I'm almost ashamed to say that I had no prior familiarity with the work of this author but was so profoundly impressed by the almost lyrical nature of the writing, clarity of ideas and lucid mindset behind the concepts that I immediately went in search of prior works. Yes, this is a dense read and not one that will be undertaken lightly; it is written in a style that requires active participation from the reader rather than the now commonly accepted passivity that passes for reading today. The entire work is filled with substance - forget sitting down to tease one or two nuggets of wisdom from between the pages, this author is generous with ideas and lavish with concepts designed to spark the flame of insight page after page after page. I'm unable to compare this to prior works by the same author but absolutely recommend. Superb.

I personally did not find much to like in this book. My own preferences lean to Stephen Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature, or The World After GDP. However, there is good food for thought here, though I found the writing style to be tedious and wordy. Also, there is a difference between wanting the repeat the past and looking at the past to better understand things to make the future better.To better help you judge whether the topic and the author’s writing style suit you, here is the author’s definition of retrotopia from the Introduction:“What I call ‘retrotropia’, is a derivative of the aforementioned second degree of negation – negation of utopia’s negation, one that shares with Thomas More’s legacy its fixity on a territorially sovereign topos: a firm ground thought to provide, and hopefully guarantee, an acceptable modicum of stability and therefore a satisfactory legacy in approving, absorbing, and incorporating the contributions/corrections supplied by its immediate predecessor: namely, the replacement of the ‘ultimate perfection’ idea with the assumption of the non-finality and endemic dynamism of the order it promotes, allowing thereby for the possibility (as well as desirability) of an indefinite succession of future changes that such an idea a priori de-legitimizes and precludes. True to the utopian spirit, retrotopia derives it stimulus from the hope of reconciling, at long last, security with freedom: the feat that both the original vision and its first negation didn’t try – or, having attempted, failed – to attain. I intend to follow this brief sketch of the most notable meanders of the post-More, 500-years-long history of modern utopia, with an exercise in unraveling, portraying and putting on record some of the most remarkable ‘back to the future’ tendencies inside the emergent ‘retrotopian’ phase in utopia’s history – in particular, rehabilitation of the tribal mode of community, return to the concept of a primordial/pristine self predetermined by non-cultural and culture-immune factors, and all in all retreat from the presently held (prevalent in both social science and popular opinions) view of the essential, presumably non-negotiable and sine qua non features of the ‘civilized order’.”I believe that this passage should let you know whether this book is for you or not.