In friendship with Keith Tester

It was May 2016, after a year in which I began work on my biography of Zygmunt Bauman.

Speaking about this project with an American sociologist, he advised me to be in touch with the best ‘Baumanists’: Peter Beilharz and Keith Tester.

I hesitated. Several months before (1 November 2015) when, for the second time, I interviewed Bauman in Leeds, informing him that I would write his biography, Bauman responded: ‘It is probably unproductive – Tester is doing it already.’ Tester was his former PhD student, co-author, widely recognized sociologist and Bauman’s friend.

I hesitated to contact Keith Tester. After all, in this academic world, which I had studied for years, investigating careers of scholars, the sense of competition is so strong that safe cooperation is rare. On the other hand, I had already conducted the interviews with Bauman’s friends, in order to collect my data. I wrote to Peter Beilharz, who responded immediately, offering his help and confirming that Keith was the official biographer of Bauman for Polity.

Peter also sent my letter to Keith and the response was immediate too: ‘Many thanks for this – yes, I’m very happy to help in any way I can. The more the merrier on the Bauman Bus!’

And that was all typical for Keith – he was very happy to help in any way he could.

I was surprised and glad, but our connection was not working quite yet. I needed first to do my work focused on the ‘Polish’ period, so I ‘scheduled’ Keith for the second stage of the work – for 2017.

Zygmunt Bauman died in January 2017. Some scholars from my networks who knew that I was working on Bauman’s biography pushed me to find a publisher. I sent to Peter Beilharz my book proposal, asking for advice. Peter forwarded it to Keith.

There the whole process accelerated. Keith immediately sent the proposal to his editor, who contacted me and offered serious help and support. Without Keith’s help my proposal would never have been sent to Polity Press – Bauman’s publisher.

Some months later, when I finished the first chapters, I decided to send them to Keith, asking for his feedback. He was so enthusiastic and supportive that working on the next chapters was a pleasure. I became addicted to his emails, which brought me the sense of security and huge self-confidence – an extremely rare feeling that authors (especially scholars) experience during their work. Keith offered immediate help, making some corrections and trimming the manuscript. We discussed the issues which were not yet explained clearly enough – he was fascinated by what I presented and completely available for this first reading, which is so important. I was completely trusting of this relationship that quickly became a deep intellectual friendship. We became close souls. Such a situation had never happened to me in over 20 years of scholarly activity. I felt as though I had known him for years.

After those first exchanges, he wrote to me that he had worked on Bauman’s biography but, lacking the resources of an academic post, his working conditions were insufficient for writing a biography. Moreover, he considered the ‘Polish period’ crucial for understanding Bauman’s life. The lack of knowledge of the Polish language, which was the basic condition for understanding the complexity of Polish history, literature and culture, made him resign from the pursuit of the project. He encouraged me to continue my work, repeating several times that I had the best tools for writing this complex piece of our history.

Keith not only ‘coached me’ in a very gentle way but also forwarded me all his correspondence with Bauman. Keith’s excellent questions, Bauman’s elaborated responses – other questions…several pages that I was able to partially include in my book. Referring to Tester was so helpful.

This material was very precious but it was much more than this that Keith offered. What I received, miraculously, was Keith’s inestimable help, endless trust and unique support. I was immersed in a creative flow that he had won through mastery.

He waited for the next chapters to read, and frequently I trapped myself thinking about his reaction to this or that ‘discovery’. We exchanged letters between sending chapters. Not only about Bauman’s life but about politics (a lot of our exchanges were about this – Keith was deeply preoccupied by the rise of fascism), family (for him, his family was very important and we perfectly tuned in on this area too) and animals (it was another important topic to share – he appreciated my engagement in saving our large animal family).

We planned a meeting in my familial home in Sardinia this summer. He promised to come with his family. We discussed visiting Gramsci’s places, exchanging our vegetarian recipes and testing Vermentino – Keith loved white wine.

We planned…and discussed all that by emails, exchanged sometimes several times in a day. We developed a unique, deep friendship that made my writing both possible and extremely productive.

He dealt with my worries about everything: linguistic insufficiency (the chapters were corrected by my friend-writer Arthur Allen, but not my long letters full of grammatical errors), lack of knowledge in some areas of Bauman’s intellectual production, and about my limited understanding of the British context of Bauman’s life. I was in his confidence and at ease with my writing flow. That comfort was provided by such logic as: ‘I am writing and if I am wrong – Keith will help to fix it. I am writing and if it is too long – Keith will help with trimming!’

I waited impatiently for our meeting – he was one of my privileged interviewees and a best friend that I had not yet met. There was such a long list of topics and questions for a single meeting.

We met in London on 2 November 2018 at his preferred place –the public library.

We spent four hours speaking mainly about Bauman and Keith’s relation to him. It was a unique and very important – crucial – interview, that helped me to understand some aspects of Bauman’s personality I had not expected. He was full of passion and extremely respectful about what I had already done. I could not imagine at that moment that it was also to be our last meeting.

Two and half months later, in Leeds, on the eve of a Bauman Symposium in 2019, I received a message from his daughter. I could not accept that he had died. He left a huge empty space, even though we had known each other for such a short period. I am still thinking about him and his family, who he loved so much.

Keith signed his last letters ‘in friendship’. I owe him a great deal, through all his deep support and involvement in my writing. But what is more important is that he made me believe that in our academic universe such a deep collaborative relationship is possible. Most importantly, thanks to Keith, I recovered my faith in deep friendship and trust in the human. This is the great yet simple legacy of friendship.