The Unannihilable – Zygmunt Bauman as Analyst and Ambassador of Ambivalence

In Zygmunt Bauman’s work, ambivalence was a topic that explicitly recurred several times in his analyses of modernity and later liquid modernity. This was particularly evident in his book Modernity and Ambivalence (1991). But ambivalence also appears as an underlying theme in later books on life in liquid-modern society (e.g. Bauman 2000). Moreover, Bauman’s socio-logical perspective itself oozes of ambivalence, and many of the topics he explored and em-braced throughout his career – such as freedom, morality, immortality and utopia – are them-selves fundamental expressions of ambivalence. In addition, Bauman always insisted that the world is a not fixed once and for all, but that humans can challenge and change it (Tester 2004:9), and in this way ambivalence is not an ailment to be cured but rather a fact to be ac-cepted. This article thus explores the theme and leitmotif of ambivalence in the writings of Bauman. The article seeks to provide a compact presentation and discussion of Bauman’s continuous engagement with ambivalence in order to show that sociology perhaps ought to take the topic of ambivalence more seriously than is currently the case.