Gehen lernen in Zeitverschiebungen. Die Raum-Zeit-Dimension als Schlüssel zum Verständnis von Moderne und Postmoderne

Bauman’s studies contribute significantly to the analysis of the place-time dimensions of the Social from a sociological point of view. Bauman explores how the present is negotiated in relation to the question of the control of place and time, how modernity begins with a fixation on place and how postmodernity develops, where place was perceived on the one hand as limited and on the other as threatened. The article emphasizes that the shifts in the relations of place and time play an important role in Bauman’s work. Zygmunt Bauman links the analysis of the processes of movement with the observation of a released time. For Bauman, »being modern« means being »on the move«. He regards modernity as the impossibility of standing still. Thus he generally conceives modern man as a nomad. Among other things, the article focuses on the relations to perspectives by Kurt Lewin, Walter Benjamin, and Georg Simmel in order to make visible the great importance of cultural practices in Bauman’s research. It becomes obvious that postmodern thinking has given rise to a new, restless utopian thinking. Within the boundaries of postmodernism, the means of modern violence have been persistent, but a fear has been brought up that these means might also be directed against one’s own society. All the more emphatically, the figures typified by Bauman, such as the vagabonds and tourists, seem to crystallize the longing of postmodernism to assure oneself of the limits of violence in daily life.