The Holocaust must be read as integral to modernity, not as its aberration.

Evidence

It was my intention to proceed from the point to which Adorno or Arendt had brought what has remained a blatantly unfinished task. I wished to exhort fellow social thinkers to consider the relation between the event of the Holocaust and the structure and logic of modern life, to stop viewing the Holocaust as a bizarre and aberrant episode in modern history, and think it through instead as a highly relevant, integral part of that history; ‘integral’ in the sense of being indispensable for the understanding of what that history was truly about, what it was capable of and why – and the sort of society that has emerged from it, and which we all inhabit. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 630

Categorization

• XREF: This is the core Bauman thesis that the Islamophobia readings on genocide and modernity will build on. — connects to: The Holocaust is a possibility modernity contains, not its paradigm — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 49; The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 82; Modern civilization was a necessary but not sufficient condition of the Holocaust. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 71 (+11 more)

Related

• All Holocaust scholarship is ultimately a debate over modernity’s self-image. (similarity 0.93)
• The Holocaust is a possibility modernity contains, not its paradigm (similarity 0.92)
• The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. (similarity 0.90)
• Modernity’s institutions actively enabled and supplied the Holocaust (similarity 0.90)
• Normalizing the Holocaust as one genocide among many also defuses its challenge to sociology (similarity 0.90)
• The Holocaust was a product of modern civilization, not merely its failure (similarity 0.90)
• The Holocaust is a product of modern rational society, not a Jewish problem alone (similarity 0.90)
• The Holocaust is a by-product of runaway modernist design (similarity 0.89)
• The Holocaust rendered Western civilization itself incomprehensible, not just the event. (similarity 0.89)
• The Holocaust combined long-festering social tensions with the rational instruments modernity created (similarity 0.88)
• The Holocaust resulted from distinctly modern social and political conditions (similarity 0.88)
• Modern civilization was a necessary but not sufficient condition of the Holocaust. (similarity 0.88)
• The Holocaust failed to transform sociology’s self-understanding of modern civilization. (similarity 0.88)
• Both dominant readings of the Holocaust leave sociology’s theory of modernity unchallenged (similarity 0.88)
• The Holocaust functions as a laboratory test revealing modernity’s hidden capacities. (similarity 0.88)

Broader Connections

• The Holocaust was a product of modern civilization, not merely its failure #corroborates (0.93) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 256
• The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. #corroborates (0.92) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 82
• The Holocaust is a possibility modernity contains, not its paradigm #expands (0.90) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 49
• Modernity’s institutions actively enabled and supplied the Holocaust #expands (0.88) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 251
• Modern civilization was a necessary but not sufficient condition of the Holocaust. #qualifies (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 71
• The Holocaust is a product of modern rational society, not a Jewish problem alone #corroborates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 21
• Marginalizing the Holocaust silences its message about modern institutions #expands (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 27
• Historical explanation of the Holocaust does not yield comprehension of its meaning for modernity. #complicates (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 629