Individuality paradoxically emerges through the exchange process that levels it.

Evidence

Although all elements on the side of the universal process of exchange are made commensurable with each other, individuality is only possible giventhisrelationship.Afterall,individualityisnotapurebeing-for-itself, but rather becomes one in relationship to another. Thus, the process of levelling is at the same time itself a process of differentiation and also of individualisation. Individuality as differentiation emerges through comparability with others. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1250

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The counterintuitive claim that the levelling of exchange is itself the condition of individuation — a paradox that resists one-sentence summary and rewards re-reading.
• XREF: connects to: Market-driven exaggeration of eccentricity makes the individual complicit in his own commodification.; Economic value emerges through the distance exchange creates between self and object — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 250; Individuality is simultaneously a residue escaping the system and a wound the system inflicts (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Individuality is simultaneously a residue escaping the system and a wound the system inflicts #expands (0.85)
• Individuality is a product of market political economy, not its opposite #corroborates (0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 169
• Economic value emerges through the distance exchange creates between self and object #expands (0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 250
• Commodity exchange reduces difference to identity through endless novelty #complicates (0.80) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 548
• Individuality advances through metamorphoses where new formation still carries the past #expands (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1311
• Individual identity forms dialogically through a constitutive outside, not autonomously. #expands (0.75) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 363
• Individuality emerges from the layering and clash of overlapping social types #expands (0.75) — Janet Burroway; Elizabeth Stuckey-French; Ned Stuckey-French, Writing Fiction, Tenth Edition, 284
• Individuality itself is an illusion produced by the law of value #qualifies (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 932