Leonidas Donskis with an Introduction by Sigurd Skirbekk
modernity in crisis Leonidas Donskis, 2011 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-10879-0 All rights reserved. First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-29158-8 ISBN 978-0-230-33919-4 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230339194 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Donskis, Leonidas. Modernity in crisis : a dialogue on the culture of belonging / Leonidas Donskis. p. cm. Includes index. 1. Group identity Europe, Eastern. 2. Group identity Europe, Central. 3. Political culture Europe, Eastern. 4. Political culture Europe, Central. 5. Europe, Eastern Politics and government 1989 6. Europe, Central Politics and government 1989 7. Europe, Eastern Social conditions 1989 8. Europe, Central Social conditions 1989 9. Europe Civilization 1945 I. Title. JN96.A58D66 2011 306.20943 dc22 2011005480I Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: August 2011
To Zygmunt Bauman with all my gratitude, affection, and love
They are like people anywhere. They love money, but that has always been true... People love money, no matter what it is made of, leather, paper, bronze, or gold. And they are thoughtless... but, then again, sometimes mercy enters their hearts... they are ordinary people... On the whole, they remind me of their predecessors... only the housing shortage has had a bad effect on them... You were always an avid proponent of the theory that after his head is cut off, a man s life comes to an end, he turns to dust, and departs into nonbeing. I have the pleasure of informing you in the presence of my guests although they actually serve as proof of a different theory altogether that your theory is both incisive and sound. However, one theory is as good as another. There is even a theory that says that to each man it will be given according to his beliefs. May it be so! You are departing into non- being, and, from the goblet into which you are being transformed, I will have the pleasure of drinking a toast to being. Chi son io tu non saprai. (Who I am, you shall not discover.) Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita Lorenzo Da Ponte/Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart We miss community because we miss security, a quality crucial to a happy life, but one which the world we inhabit is ever less able to offer and ever more reluctant to promise... Insecurity affects us all, immersed as we all are in a fluid and unpredictable world of deregulation, flexibility, competitiveness and endemic uncertainty, but each one of us suffers anxiety on our own, as a private problem, an outcome of personal failings and a challenge to our private savoir- faire and agility. We are called, as Ulrich Beck acidly observed, to seek biographical solutions to systemic contradictions; we look for individual salvation from shared troubles. That strategy is unlike to bring the results we are after, since it leaves the roots of insecurity intact; moreover, it is precisely this falling back on our individual wits and resources that injects the world with the insecurity we wish to escape. Zygmunt Bauman, Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World
Acknowledgments ix Introduction by Sigurd Skirbekk 1 1 Troubled Identity, or the European Canon and the Dilemmas of Memory 7 2 Secrets, Mysteries, Conspiracies, and Art 43 3 Eastern Europe after Communism: Identity and Morality in a Boundary Region 81 4 The Crisis of Modernity and the Age of Anesthesia, or Life According to Zygmunt Bauman 133 5 In the Name of Civilization, or the New Forms of Angst and Longing 167 Works Cited 195 Index 201
For encouragement, power of judgment, and my sense of projet de la vie, I am immensely grateful to my dear friend Zygmunt Bauman, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Leeds, the United Kingdom, one of the greatest thinkers of our times. He became my major inspiration and source of my confidence in myself, my work, and my sense of raison d être. More than that, he anticipated and identified the emerging trajectories of my thought. I would not have done it myself. For encouragement, sensible anticipation of the new forms of my professional life and work, and invaluable lessons in the art of academic writing, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my dear friend Robert Ginsberg, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. He gave me a second academic life by allowing me to enter the English language academic world of writing and editing. For a long- standing professional dialogue, valuable advice, and critique, I am indebted to my colleague Sigurd Skirbekk, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Oslo, Norway. My warmest thanks are owed to Lena Pasternak, Director of the Baltic Center for Writers and Translators in Visby, Sweden, for graciously allowing me to spend my happy time at the Center, putting the finishing touches on my book. Parts of Chapter One previously appeared in Leonidas Donskis, The European Cultural Canon and the Predicaments of Memory Politics, in Ineke van Hamersveld and Arthur Sonnen, eds. (2009) Identifying with Europe: Reflections on a Historical and Cultural Canon for Europe; Amsterdam: Boekmanstudies, EUNIC and SICA: 103 126 (ISBN: 978-90- 6650-097- 6). I thank Ineke van Hamersveld, Arthur Sonnen, and the Boekman Foundation for their kind permission to incorporate parts of this material. Parts of Chapter Two previously appeared in Leonidas Donskis, Secrets, Mysteries, and Art, in Timo Airaksinen and Manfred J. Holler, eds. (2009) Homo Oeconomicus 26 (1) Munich: ACCEDO- Verlag: 97 121 (ISBN: 978-3- 89265-070- 6). I thank my colleagues Timo Airaksinen, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and Manfred J.
Holler, Professor of Economics in the Institute of SocioEconomics at the University of Hamburg, Germany (executive editor of ACCEDO Verlag), guest editors of the special issue of Homo Oeconomicus, for their gracious permission to incorporate parts of this material. In addition, my warm thanks are given to Professor Airaksinen and Professor Holler for their valuable advice, from which I greatly benefitted working on the book. I am indebted to my dear colleague Olli Loukola, Docent of Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, for his critique and inspiring suggestions. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Mykolas Drunga, a Lithuanian philosopher, translator, and journalist, for translating my unpublished essay on Zygmunt Bauman from Lithuanian into English. This essay laid the foundations for Chapter Four. I thank Albina Strunga and Darius J. Ross for translating parts of Chapter Three from Lithuanian into English. I thank all the good people at Palgrave Macmillan with whom I have had the pleasure and privilege of working on my book. Finally, with all my affection and love, I wish to thank my wife Jolanta for her unfading love and support, which were vital for me to accomplish this book.