Intimacy in Postmodern Times

'As sociological data - as a record of how academic intellectuals at the turn of the century spent their time - Peter Beilharz's memoir is valuable enough; but it is also a searching exploration of his debt to one of the great social theorists of our age.'J. M. Coetzee'Peter Beilharz is one of the most cosmopolitan, self-reflexive and generous social theorists in the world today. His memoir takes us backstage, to the emotional matrix within which social theory is made.'Jeffrey C. Alexander, Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology, Yale University 'A story of intellectual life fuelled by universal ideas of inspiration, admiration, labour, friendship, gain and loss.'Mark Davis, Director of the Bauman Institute for Critical Sociology, University of Leeds 'A must-read, passionate book celebrating intellectual exchanges, powerful friendship and love.'Izabela Wagner, Associate Professor of Sociology at Collegium Civitas, Warsaw and author of Bauman: A Biography Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) was one of the most remarkable thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He did major work on the Holocaust, the postmodern and much else, up to fifty-eight books in English on almost as many topics. Here, sociologist Peter Beilharz, a friend and collaborator for thirty years, revisits the work they did together, weighing up Bauman's rich yet contested legacy. Beginning in the late 1980s, he traces Bauman's prolific output right up to his death, paying particular attention to the 'liquid modern' period of the 2000s and 2010s. In doing so, he provides an account of two interweaving intellectual journeys and of the dramatic changes that have occurred in academic life over three decades.