Being named Nobody makes Odysseus countable as nonexistent to the Cyclops

Evidence

Anticipations of this decline of language were evident in the cultural document Horkheimer and Adorno chose to study in their first of two excursuses in the Dialectic, Homer’s Odyssey. The trick Odysseus played on Cyclops by calling himself “No-man” was also a denial of his identity, which to the primitive, pre-Enlightened mind of the giant was the same as his name. Ultimately, however, the trick was on Odysseus, since Western man had in fact lost his identity, as language capable of conceptualization and negation had been replaced by language capable only of acting as an instrument of the status quo. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 792 (#expands, via linked claim)

But he boomed back at me from his ruthless heart, ‘Nobody? I’ll eat Nobody last of all his friends — I’ll eat the others first! That’s my gift to you!’ — Homer; Robert Fagles; Bernard Knox, The Odyssey, 1957 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Odysseus’s trick on Cyclops prefigured the loss of identity under Enlightenment language. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 792; The Nobody ruse exploits the giant’s boastful brutality — Homer; Robert Fagles; Bernard Knox, The Odyssey, 1957

Broader Connections

• Odysseus’s trick on Cyclops prefigured the loss of identity under Enlightenment language. #expands (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 792
• The Nobody ruse exploits the giant’s boastful brutality #corroborates (0.75) — Homer; Robert Fagles; Bernard Knox, The Odyssey, 1957