All Holocaust scholarship is ultimately a debate over modernity’s self-image.

Evidence

Contrary to my opinion, whenever the Holocaust is mentioned in contemporary social thought, nothing else is at stake but precisely that significance which I thought was left, heedlessly, out of consideration. As a matter in fact, most of the scholars who speak and write about the Holocaust are – overtly or covertly, consciously or subconsciously – concerned with little else but that significance: with the presence or the absence of the link between the Holocaust and the inner essence of modernity, and thus with the right to salvage or the obligation to revise some of the most coveted assumptions which modernity has made about the nature of its own enterprise and to which it has to cling if that enterprise is to continue in its historically shaped and prevailing form. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 631

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Holocaust is a possibility modernity contains, not its paradigm — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 49; The Holocaust combined long-festering social tensions with the rational instruments modernity created — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 32; Both dominant readings of the Holocaust leave sociology’s theory of modernity unchallenged — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 42 (+3 more)

Related

• Both dominant readings of the Holocaust leave sociology’s theory of modernity unchallenged (similarity 0.93)
• The Holocaust must be read as integral to modernity, not as its aberration. (similarity 0.93)
• The Holocaust is a possibility modernity contains, not its paradigm (similarity 0.93)
• The Holocaust failed to transform sociology’s self-understanding of modern civilization. (similarity 0.90)
• The Holocaust is a by-product of runaway modernist design (similarity 0.89)
• The Holocaust question must keep its full weight and horror (similarity 0.89)
• The Holocaust rendered Western civilization itself incomprehensible, not just the event. (similarity 0.88)
• The Holocaust was a product of modern civilization, not merely its failure (similarity 0.88)
• The Holocaust functions as a laboratory test revealing modernity’s hidden capacities. (similarity 0.88)
• The Holocaust reveals sociology’s inadequacy more than sociology explains the Holocaust (similarity 0.87)
• The Holocaust combined long-festering social tensions with the rational instruments modernity created (similarity 0.87)
• Normalizing the Holocaust as one genocide among many also defuses its challenge to sociology (similarity 0.87)
• The Holocaust resulted from distinctly modern social and political conditions (similarity 0.87)
• Academic sociology has structurally avoided engaging the Holocaust as a disciplinary challenge. (similarity 0.86)
• Modern civilization was a necessary but not sufficient condition of the Holocaust. (similarity 0.86)

Broader Connections

• The Holocaust is a possibility modernity contains, not its paradigm #expands (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 49
• Both dominant readings of the Holocaust leave sociology’s theory of modernity unchallenged #corroborates (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 42
• The Holocaust must be read as integral to modernity, not as its aberration. #expands (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 630
• The Holocaust is a by-product of runaway modernist design #exemplifies (0.74) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 272
• The Holocaust combined long-festering social tensions with the rational instruments modernity created #qualifies (0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 32
• The Holocaust failed to transform sociology’s self-understanding of modern civilization. #corroborates (0.70) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 242