Revisiting Modernity and the Holocaust : heritage, dilemmas, extensions / edited by Jack Palmer and Dariusz Brzeziński.

Editors introduction : through the window again : revisiting modernity and the Holocaust / Jack Palmer & Dariusz Brzeziński -- Modernity or decivilization? Bauman's thesis after 30 years / Larry Ray -- The sociology of modernity, the ethnography of the Holocaust : what Zygmunt Bauman knew / Joanna Tokarska-Bakir -- From understanding victims to victims' understanding : rationality, shame and other emotions in modernity and the Holocaust / Dominic Williams -- Warsaw Jews in the face of the Holocaust : 'trajectory' as the key concept in understanding victims' behaviour / Maria Ferenc -- Visual representations of modernity in documents from the Łódź Ghetto / Paweł Michna -- Reassessing modernity and the Holocaust in the light of genocide in Bosnia / Arne Johan Vetlesen -- The Rwandan genocide and the multiplicity of modernity / Jack Palmer -- Janina Bauman : to remain human in inhuman conditions / Lydia Bauman -- Janina and Zygmunt Bauman : a case study of inspiring collaboration / Izabela Wagner -- Reading modernity and the Holocaust with and against winter in the morning / Griselda Pollock -- Bauman, the Frankfurt School, and the tradition of enlightened catastrophism / Jonathon Catlin -- Modernity and the Holocaust and the concentrationary universe / Max Silverman -- Off-the-scene : an afterword / Bryan Cheyette.

"Zygmunt Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust is a decisive text of intellectual reflection after Auschwitz, in which Bauman rejected the idea that the Holocaust represented the polar opposite of modernity and saw it instead as its dark potentiality. Bringing together leading scholars from across disciplines, this volume offers the first set of focused and critical commentaries on this classic work of social theory, evaluating its ongoing contribution to scholarship in the social sciences and humanities. Addressing the core messages of Modernity and the Holocaust that continue to sound amidst the convulsions of the present, the chapters situate Bauman's volume in the social, cultural and academic context of its genesis, and considers its role in the complex processes of Holocaust memorialisation. Offering extensions of Bauman's thesis to lesser-known and under-theorised events of mass violence, and also considering the significance of Janina Bauman's writings in their own right, this volume will appeal to scholars of sociology, intellectual history, Holocaust and genocide studies, moral philosophy, memory studies, and cultural theory"-- Provided by publisher.