Identifying with death extends one’s identification with existing social conditions

Evidence

The identification with death is that which goes beyond the identification of people with the existing social conditions and in which they are extended. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1520

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what Adorno means by ‘identification with death’ — the concrete mechanism by which acceptance of mortality underwrites acceptance of the status quo.
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the load-bearing connective claim: acceptance of death is not natural wisdom but the deepest form of allegiance to what exists. Dense and paradigm-shifting.
• QUESTION: Does this entail that Adorno actually believed in the real possibility of abolishing death, or only that the thought-experiment functions as a diagnostic of ideological closure?
• XREF: connects to: Being-towards-death frames mortality as the source of authentic existence — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 933; Any group defined as a racial object finds its identity mediated through death — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1837; the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: Ours, True, and the Identity That Defends Both”