Mal - estar na (pós) modernidade: apontamentos entre Bauman e Freud

Abstract

This monographic work (TCC) deals with the theme of malaise in modern and postmodern society, as well as the reasons for human unhappiness in this civilizing process, as stated by Sigmund Freud in his work “Civilization and its discontents” and Zygmunt Bauman in “Postmodernity and its discontents”. Other important works were also consulted, such as “All that is solid melts into air” by Marshall Berman and “The origins of postmodernity” by Perry Anderson, in addition to other important thinkers that deal with the subject in question. Initially, a brief summary was made of the historical contextualization about modernity and post-modernity, or liquid modernity, as Bauman preferred to call it lately. According to Freud, all the imposition aimed at the construction of civilization causes several disorders to the human being, precisely because culture or civilization produces a malaise by imposing “such great sacrifices, not only to the sexuality of man, but also to his aggressiveness”, it is due to such frustrations, in sacrificing their drives, that lies the great difficulty of living and being happy in this civilization. Still according to the psychoanalyst, the happiness of man “is not included in the plan of 'Creation'” and happiness is something fleeting or sudden, that is, only moments of pleasure, or perhaps, at least so that we do not have moments of displeasures. It is important to note that Bauman re-reads by developing a constant dialogue with the Freudian text mentioned above. The Polish thinker makes a counterpoint between a solid society and a liquid society. Liquidity characterized mainly by insecurity, uncertainties, the disposable and the feeling of failure of rationality or ephemeral happiness. While Marshall Berman defines that one of the characteristics of modernity is to live a life of paradox and contradiction, Bauman, affirms that we live in a scenario of uncertainty, calling attention to a constant search for exacerbated consumption, as well as vulnerability and fluidity in interpersonal relationships. The Polish thinker comes to the conclusion that in the structure of a civilization focused on security, more freedom represents less malaise, on the other hand, in a civilization where the structure has chosen to limit freedom in the name of security, the more order the greater the malaise. Bauman infers that there was only one change of place, because the malaise of modernity “came from a kind of security that tolerated too little freedom in the pursuit of individual happiness” whereas in postmodernity the malaise arises from a kind of freedom to seek pleasure that tolerates very little individual security. For, "postmodern men and women have exchanged a share of their possibilities of security for a share of happiness". Therefore, Bauman asserts that individual freedom, in our times, is only a sensation of freedom, that is, a pseudo-freedom, concluding that there is an impossibility of harmony between freedom and security.