"The mobility enjoyed by "the people who invest" - who have the capital, the money needed for investment - brings about a disengagement of power towards any duty, a phenomenon which takes a new form, of a yet unseen radicality : no more duties towards the workers, towards the youngest or weakest, towards future generations, towards the preservation of the condition of life. In one word, we are witnessing the end of the duty to contribute to everyday life of the community, and its perpetuation. Today exists an assymetry of a new kind between the deterritorialized nature of power and the maintenance of "life in general" in its territorial frames - life which the new power, able to move suddenly and without warning, is free to exploit, and to abandon to the consequences of this exploitation."
Bauman, 1999, p. 20.
"The summit of the new hierarchy is extra-territorial; its lower strata are marked by varying degrees of spatial constraints, and the lowest is that of the glebae adscripti (those who are ascribed to the glebe), exploitable at leisure. "
Bauman, 1999, p. 160
"The state that seems the most awful to us, the most cruel and ghastly, is forced immobility, the fact of being enchained somewhere without having the right to leave; what makes this situation unbearable, is impossibility to move, rather than frustration which would come from an actual desire to leave. Not being able to move is a remarkable sign of impotence, incapability and pain. (...) Immobilization is the fate that people who are haunted by their own immobilization would like to see imposed on whom they are afraid of, and who deserve to their eyes an exemplary and cruel punishment."
Bauman, 1999, pp. 183-184.
About why the penal system strikes lower classes harder than higher classes, Bauman gives the following reasons :
"On the one hand, we find the particular intents of lawmakers, who have a very precise notion of order. What actions are susceptible to find a place in the Penal Code ? Acts which can committ those who are excluded from this notion of order : losers and oppressed ones. Stealing the resources of entire nations, is "promoting free enterprise"; stealing the livelihood of whole families and communities, is called "downsizing", or "rationalizing". Those two thefts are of course not inscribed in the list of criminal acts and susceptible to sanction."
Bauman, 1999, p. 185
(Lyrics -in french - here)
"On the other hand, as every police services dealing with this kind of affairs know, illegal behaviors committed at the "summit" of the hierarchy are hardly separable from the tight web of day-to-day and "ordinary" affairs. (...) The crimes of "high society" are ill-defined, and are furthermore extremely difficult to track down. (...) These crimes imply a degree of financial and juridical sophistication, almost impossible to understand for an outsider, especially if he is profane or unexperienced. These wrongdoings are "disembodied", they are without physical substance; they "exist" in pure space, in the imaginary space of pure abstraction : they are literally invisible. Relying on its intuition and its common sense, the population can suspect that the constitution of fortunes is punctuated with thefts, but nothing is more difficult than to point a precise action. (...) It is hard to see how judging the convicted ones could alleviate the everyday sorrow hauting poor neighborhoods or dangerous streets of our cities. There is thus not really any political advantage to get for who "actually" act against crimes "at the summit" . "
Bauman, 1999, 186-188.
* I translated the quotes from a french edition : Zygmunt Bauman, 1999, Le coût humain de la mondialisation , Hachettes. [1998, Globalization. The Human Consequences, Polity Press and Blackwell publishers]
** Kery James - Banlieusards // Kery James - Thug Life // Mafia K'1 Fry - C'est la Guerre // Keny Arkana - La Rage // Ideal J - Hardcore //
- Subtitles by youtuber hiphopisdead92.
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