Death, meaning and tragedy (Postmodernity, deconstruction of immortality, life strategy)

In this article, the author submits Zygmunt Bauman's analysis of postmodernity as a life strategy entailing the 'deconstruction of immortality' to critical scrutiny. 'Deconstructing' the striving for immortality suggests the transformation of life into a continual rehearsal of the transcience and demise of all things, the celebration of moments or instances of short-lived fame or notoriety, and the effacement of the opposition between the transient and the durable. This idea--with its implicated suggestion that everything, including life itself, loses meaning and importance, and that the striving for durable effect becomes obsolete--is found to be both logically and morally incoherent. The author suggests and develops the idea of life as tragedy within the species of death as key to developing a more cogent life strategy, drawing on insights from Aristotle and Nietzsche, and countering the pessimism of Schopenhauer in this regard.