'Identity Politics'

Dennis R Redmond dredmond at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU
Fri Sep 17 15:53:27 PDT 1999


On Sat, 18 Sep 1999, rc-am wrote:


> Adorno has a much more interesting definition (echoing a little i think
> terms of a connection between identity and destiny: "The identity of the
> self and its alienation accompany each other from the very beginning;
> whence the bad romanticism of the concept of alienation in the first
> place. A precondition of freedom, identity is at one and the same time
> also and immediately the principle of determinism." (_Negative
> Dialectics_)

Uh-oh. Looks like the Ashton translation again. Where's the page reference for this, exactly?

Also, for Adornophiles, another mindbending gem from pp. 17-18 of Negative Dialectics (German edition):

"The contradiction is the non-identical under the aspect of identity; the primacy of the principle of contradiction in dialectics yields the heterogenous within unitary thinking. By colliding against its own borders, it reaches beyond itself. Dialectics is the consequent consciousness of non-identity... Identity and contradiction in thinking are welded to one another. The totality of the contradiction is nothing less than the untruth of the total identification, as this is manifested in itself. Contradiction is non-identity under the spell of the law, which also influences the non-identical." ND:17-18

-- Dennis



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