Adorno’s postwar Jewish identification was negative, rooted in the murdered community.

Evidence

Only after the war does Adorno reach a kind of negative identification with Judaism as a community of fate. … I am reluctant to correspond with you about the Jews …. After 6 million have been murdered, it goes against my instincts to dwell on the manners of those few who survived, whom I incidentally do not need to like. In addition to that, the 50% goy in me feels somehow responsible for the Jewish persecution, so I am therefore quite especially allergic to everything that is said against the chosen people. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1494

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to debates about Adorno’s Jewishness and ‘identity thinking’ — resonates with the contingency of identity that postcolonial and critical race theory unpack.
• QUESTION: The ‘50% goy’ claim — Adorno’s actual Jewish heritage was from his mother; worth tracing how he calculated this percentage and what it reveals about his self-conception.