False identity means apparent individuality itself is the manufactured illusion

Evidence

What makes the identity illusory is not that it does not occur, but that the moment of particularity itself is illusory. Hence, the governing leitmotif of the chapter is the reiterated demonstration that what appears as particularity and individuality is not so, and that what might emerge as a point of resistance to the all-embracing unity of the system is immediately integrated and repressed. Since we do not possess an independent account of true particularity and individuality, it is through the contrast between the typical productions of the culture industry and those of autonomous art that the culture industry’s false identity of particular and universal is established. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 24

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives the precise definition of pseudo-individuation: particularity that is real in its occurrence but illusory in its content.
• XREF: This is the exact tool the reader plans to run on post-Adorno culture — differentiating genuine particularity from manufactured difference. — connects to: The self’s seeming uniqueness is a mass-produced commodity falsely posed as natural — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 117; Rejecting all appearance as false illusion leads to losing truth itself — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 552; Individuality itself is an illusion produced by the law of value — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 932 (+2 more)