Individuality is simultaneously a residue escaping the system and a wound the system inflicts

Evidence

When the feelings seize on exchange value it is no mystical transubstantiation. It corresponds to the behaviour of the prisoner who loves his cell because he has been left nothing else to love. The sacrifice of individuality, which accommodates itself to the regularity of the successful, the doing of what everybody does, follows from the basic fact that in broad areas the same thing is offered to everybody by the standardized production of consumption goods. But the commercial necessity of connecting this identity leads to the manipulation of taste and the official culture’s pretence of individualism which necessarily increases in proportion to the liquidation of the individual. Even in the realm of the superstructure, the appearance is not merely the concealment of the essence, but proceeds of necessity from the essence itself. The identical character of the goods which everyone must buy hides itself behind the rigour of the universally compulsory style. The fiction of the relation between supply and demand survives in the fictitiously individual nuances. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 82 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Fragility is a human import, a probability of non-being founded on individualizing limitation.; Individual stubbornness is only admirable in relation to a hardened collectivity; Individuality cannot escape the social system because its inner essence already embodies that system (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Individuality cannot escape the social system because its inner essence already embodies that system #complicates (0.88)
• Disciplinary power produces individuality rather than merely restricting it from outside #corroborates (0.85)
• Standardized production forces a compensating pretence of individualism #corroborates (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 82
• Modern individuality arises from rupture with the world, not harmony with it #qualifies (0.78) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 841