https://journals.scientia.international/SIJSocial

Scientia International Journal for

Social Sciences

Vol. 1, 1 (2026)

Type: Book Review | DOI: 10.56365/qe4vcw22

This is an open access publication under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0).

FRAGMENTS OF BAUMAN’S TRAJECTORY:

Review of the book My Life in Fragments

Rodrigo Koch1*

1Rio Grande do Sul State University, Brazil, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6719-1839

* Corresponding author: rodrigo-koch@uergs.edu.br

Abstract

Critical review of the book My Life in Fragments (Bauman, 2024).

Keywords: Bauman; Postmodernity; Liquid Modernity; Biography.

Article details | Open Peer Review

Edited by:

Bruno César Alves Marcelino

Reviewed by:

Alan Dutra de Melo

Betânia Maciel

Citation:

Koch, R. (2026). FRAGMENTS OF BAUMAN’S TRAJECTORY: Review of the

book My Life in Fragments. Scientia International Journal for Social Sciences, 1(1),

28. https://doi.org/10.56365/qe4vcw22

Article history

Received: December 16, 2025

Revised: February 13, 2026

Accepted: February 17, 2026

Published: March 14, 2026

Bauman, Z. (2024). Minha vida: Fragmentos de uma autobiografia. I. Wagner (Ed.), B. Vargas (Trans.).

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Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.

The work My Life: Fragments of an Autobiography (translated from the original My Life in Fragments by

Berilo Vargas, Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2024, 238 pages), composed of autobiographical fragments by Zygmunt

Bauman and organized by his biographer Izabela Wagner, presents (as the title itself suggests) passages and

excerpts from the Polish sociologist’s manuscripts spanning thirty years, in which he intended to leave for

his family members of future generations records of his life’s journey that he considered important. The book

is divided into an Introduction, 7 Chapters, Notes, and Sources. Izabela Wagner, also a Polish sociologist,

was a professor of sociology at Collegium Civitas in Warsaw until 2023 and the author of *Bauman: A

Biography*. She is currently a full professor at Université Paris Cité, and her sociological research focuses

on migration and the exile of scientists, intellectuals, and musicians. In the Introduction, the editor explains

how the narratives were constructed using various texts written by Bauman over a period of three decades,

and cites the book’s main sources: a typewritten text by the sociologist from 1987 addressed to his daughters;

a few handwritten pages from a 1997 diary that questions and reflects on biographies; and a text written in

Polish that was nearly ready for publication, in which he details certain passages of his life. This second

document cited by Wagner even briefly reflects on autobiographical writing (a first-person textual genre in

which the author narrates his own life story, based on memories, real experiences, emotions, and reflections).

I would like to point out and emphasize that before venturing into the work *My Life*, readers should have

prior knowledge of Zygmunt Bauman’s intellectual and scientific journey; therefore, at the end of this review,

I provide reading suggestions in an order I consider important for a full understanding of this book. What

makes this reading important, in addition to Izabela Wagner’s work, is understanding—from the perspective

of the subject of the biography, in this case the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman—how he himself felt,

experienced, and described important moments in his life.

In Chapter 1, “The Story of Yet Another Life?”, Bauman reflects on autobiographical writing, debating—

in his own style—with writers and intellectuals about the subjectivity of such texts. Autobiographical writing

focuses, to a large extent, on subjectivity and self-assessment, allowing one to reframe the past and organize

one’s identity through psychological—and not always chronological—narratives. In these early manuscripts,

the sociologist reveals that he has experienced the anthropologist’s dilemma: when there is someone to ask,

he does not know what to ask; and when he knows the question he must ask, there is no one left to answer.

“When my parents were alive, I did not ask. When my head is full of questions, there is no one left to ask”

(BAUMAN 2024, p.30). Bauman wonders if writing memoirs might not be an act of desperation, but admits

that he does not know how to live without thinking, and does not know how to think without writing;

therefore, he would be condemned to live by writing. Still in this first chapter, he confirms how much he

disliked crowds or places full of people.

In the following chapter (2. Where I Come From), Bauman initially makes an effort to piece together

fragments of memory about his parents’ lives and speculates on how they might have met. He then delves

into the marital journey of his sister (seven years his senior), reflecting on ethnic issues surrounding Jewish-

Polish identities. Regarding many families, including his own, the sociologist reflects that they were “[...]

Jewish by fate, Polish by choice; Polish in substance and form, though Jewish by origin” (BAUMAN 2024,

p.57). When the city of Poznan became a Polish city once again—after World War I—many were able to

choose between German or Polish citizenship, and so some Jews—mostly from wealthy families—chose to

migrate to Germany, but were expelled about twenty years later and forced to cross the border again. In the

second part of this chapter, Bauman recalls his difficult childhood and early school years, being bullied by

classmates (and even teachers) and having to navigate anti-Semitic actions. Poznan became the driving force

and stronghold of National Democracy, a party that sought to influence the rest of the country with a vision

of a life without Jews. Bauman does not recall having any toys in his childhood, and so, for years, books—

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which he borrowed from a nearby library—were his friends. “I had some good classmates, but very few

friends” (p. 77). “The few friends I made were ‘special cases’ like me” (p. 78).

In that classroom, there were five of us (or at least that’s how the rest of the class decided it). One of the five would die

in the Holocaust; one still lives in Warsaw today. The other three, including myself, left their country. At least physically.

[...] And since Berger High School was the only one in the city that did not practice numerus nullus, only two Jewish boys

had entered secondary school that year in all of Poznan. (BAUMAN 2024, p.81)

The highlighted excerpt from the reviewed work reveals, to a certain extent, the extent of prejudice the

young Bauman faced in his early years of schooling. Numerus nullus was one of the forms of discrimination

adopted in Poland during the interwar period and refers to the total exclusion or prohibition of access for a

specific group (historically, Jews) to educational institutions, professions, or public office.

In 3. The Fate of a Refugee and Soldier, the sociologist recounts his memories of World War II beginning

with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. Since Poznan was only 95 kilometers from the

border and was one of the largest cities in that region, the Bauman family found themselves forced—or rather,

literally “dragged”—eastward in their flight for survival. Zygmunt briefly recounts how he was separated

from his sister—who, along with her daughter and husband, obtained British passports and chose to migrate

to Palestine—while he, his father, and his mother first took refuge in Molodeczno (before passing through

various points between Poland and Soviet territories). There, Bauman experienced a brief acceptance of his

identity, as the language spoken was a mixture of Russian, Polish, Yiddish, and a peasant dialect that some

intellectuals dreamed of elevating to the status of literary Belarusian. The category to which each person

belonged was either accidental or by choice. “I found my Zion in Molodeczno. I joined the local equivalent

of Hashomer Hatzair—the Komsomol” (BAUMAN 2024, pp.103–104). However, the breakdown of the

Hitler-Stalin Pact sent the Baumans even further away: to Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod, Russia). There, the

sociologist spent his youth enduring immense hardships in unsanitary labor camps.

I was starving. I would live in hunger for the next two and a half years, until my life in the army began. Not hungry from

time to time, but hungry 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I was hungry while waiting for food, and hungry after eating.

[...] To this day, I cannot sleep if there is no bread in the house. And I have never been able to get as excited about any

food—no matter how refined—as I am about bread. Bread, after all, is what matters. (BAUMAN 2024, p.108)

It is worth noting the great difficulties his father faced in finding any job and how much his mother’s

culinary skills (with them, but especially with the soldiers for whom she cooked) ensured the little food they

had during this period. Upon completing high school, Bauman enlisted and anxiously awaited the draft notice,

which came only when he turned eighteen. He was recruited into a rather strange division, initially

responsible for managing traffic in Moscow. “We were, so to speak, thugs recruited to guard the vault. It was

impossible to imagine people like us sympathizing with the Muscovites if there were any trouble...”

(BAUMAN 2024, p.116). Later, on the front lines, he helped liberate Poland from the Germans, but “It took

half a century for me to learn, from the newspapers of my homeland, that everything I was doing with my

comrades-in-arms was done in the name of enslaving the homeland, not its liberation” (BAUMAN 2024,

p.129). In this passage, the sociologist offers a brief, veiled critique of the fact that Poland was “handed over”

to the Soviet regime after the end of World War II.

In Chapter 4, “Maturation,” Bauman briefly examines the diverse experiences of Polish Jews during World

War II and how, subsequently, the return of some (refugees) and the continued presence of others (who had

escaped the massacre by hiding and/or living on the run) once again caused unease among those who believed

themselves to be “pure Poles.” Bauman did not wish to remain in the army, but he eventually willingly

accepted a position assigned to him for the reconstruction of Poland, now under the Soviet socialist regime.

He held a position that allowed him to study, but when he wanted to resume his academic life, his transcripts

from Gorky University, where he had been a physics student, were denied; and so, as he already felt drawn

to studies directly involved in “fixing society,” he enrolled in the Warsaw Academy of Political Sciences,

where he met Janina. “And it was certainly no accident that I never stopped loving her over the next sixty

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years” (BAUMAN 2024, p.149). However, his Zionist stance caused him to lose his job in the army,

representing a mixture of tragedy and relief.

Tragedy: the three of us—Jasia, me, and three-year-old Ania—were practically left without bread and threatened with

losing our service housing. [...] And relief: years of fear, of a life of constant readiness and subject to the same rigid

standards to which everyone was subject, were finally left behind. (BAUMAN 2024, p. 152)

The solution was to apply for an assistant professorship at the University of Warsaw, where he was

accepted into the Department of Philosophy. However, his revisionist articles cast doubt on his political

positions, leading to intense and constant surveillance of Bauman and causing him certain professional

setbacks. “The home phone, which had been tapped for some time, rang incessantly with anonymous threats

[...]” (BAUMAN 2024, p. 166). Even years after leaving Poland and while living in Leeds (England), the

sociologist recounts two distressing instances of persecution targeting his family. The ‘agents’ were after

documents belonging to Janina and her grandson Michal Sfard, at the time a young lawyer who was beginning

to get involved in political activism, specializing in international human rights law.

In the short following chapter (5. Who Am I?), Bauman again reflects on the Polish-Jewish condition and

how his entire life journey has shaped his identity. These are further fragments of his autobiographical

writing. There are two passages I consider important in this chapter:

I feel responsible for my Polish condition in the same way that I take full responsibility for my communism, for my

lifelong socialism, for my rejection of Israel, for my decision to end my life as an exile, an extraterritorial, and a loyal

subject of the Crown. (BAUMAN 2024, p.173)

Perhaps the real issue is to stop comparing, once and for all. I think the evil lies in the very compulsion to

choose, and in the curse of being chosen. When one desires to belong, there is no way to avoid excluding

those one does not admit as belonging to the same kind. Belonging can only mean dividing, and establishing

double standards. Where standards divide, morality ends. By drawing the line between us and them, we erase

the line between good and evil. (BAUMAN 2024, p.177)

In the penultimate chapter (6. Before Dark Falls), the sociologist takes a sort of journey through time and

assesses the ‘wounds’ left by both German Nazism and Soviet communism in Poland, and how this also

hindered subsequent generations in their search for an identity, causing new forms of segregation in the

country.

Hitler’s occupation left many wounds on the body and soul of the nation, but hypocrisy was not one of them. However,

that was precisely the wound that Stalinist totalitarianism sought to inflict, and, to an even greater degree, the

authoritarianism that followed. The mass production of hypocrisy was an inseparable, albeit unintentional and

unacknowledged, characteristic of Soviet communism and of those regimes that this communism was prepared to tolerate

within its “sphere of influence.” (BAUMAN 2024, p.196)

Bauman assesses Poland’s contemporary political situation beginning in the 2000s, and how religion has

been intertwined with this context. “The contemporary trend of scaring people with the ‘politicization of

religion’ diverts attention from the real objective of today’s Polish struggles and those being waged in the

rest of the world” (BAUMAN 2024, p.207). The sociologist concludes this section by stating that the routine

that makes the world unchanging and boring also makes it safe.

“It is time to reflect on the lessons that result from all of this” (BAUMAN 2024, p.219); thus, Bauman

begins the final chapter (7. Looking Back—for the Last Time), in which he offers brief comments on the

advantages of still being a child when we are, with the entire future ahead of us and infinite possibilities. In

this final text, the sociologist also offers a brief reflection on his own choices and those of his nation.

I conclude this review by recommending the reading of the work My Life: Fragments of an Autobiography,

with the caveat for readers who wish to delve deeper into the life and thoughts of Zygmunt Bauman that prior

reading of Bauman’s works is necessary. Among the sociologist’s theories, the main one concerns “Liquid

Modernity,” elaborated in detail in the book of the same name, which gave rise to other titles in which he

discusses analogies regarding liquidity and the postmodern condition of societies. In short, ‘Liquid

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Modernity’ is a condition of total fluidity in habits, political and social stances, thoughts, and institutions in

general, in contrast to the solidity they exhibited in the recent postwar past. Therefore, the book reviewed

here is primarily intended—at first—for Bauman specialists. Another important theory of the sociologist’s

to be familiar with is the ‘Consumer Society,’ in which he characterizes people themselves as products to be

consumed daily and, as this contemporary situation causes permanent anxiety for any individual to become

an attractive commodity. Thus, reading My Life sometimes requires knowledge beyond the explanatory notes

and presents certain historical gaps. As such, I emphasize that Izabela Wagner’s work, Bauman: A Biography,

ends up being much more comprehensive. What the book My Life adds is the biographee’s own perspective.

To the list of suggestions below, I add the book by his lifelong companion, Janina Bauman—Winter in the

Morning: A Young Woman in the Warsaw Ghetto (Zahar, 2005)—for a better understanding of the horrors

that befell Polish Jews during World War II.

References

Bauman, Z. (2024). Minha vida: Fragmentos de uma autobiografia. I. Wagner (Ed.), B. Vargas (Trans.).

Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.