Non-identical thinking requires resisting the identity principle that flattens qualitative difference.

Evidence

However, the non-identical does not wait unrecognised for its discovery. As long as the ‘insatiable identity principle’ prevails, ‘the nonidentical has no positive existence’. The non-identical is the governor of a knowledge which does not need to violently whip objects into shape in order to adjust itself. As long as this possibility of knowledge is not realised, everything which could possibly be different will appear as ‘just how it’s always been’ – with all the forthright consent implied by that saying. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1246

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies what the non-identical means in Adorno’s system — that which escapes the identity principle’s violent homogenization.
• XREF: Connects directly to the critique of exchange-equivalence and commodity abstraction central to political economy; also resonates with the reader’s own note ‘Small acts of decorum toward corpses matter more than practical logic’ in its resistance to functional reduction. — connects to: Identity is constructed through opposition to a continuously reinterpreted other; Without destruction of prior form, identity cannot sustain itself. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 245; The non-identical can only be approached through concepts without being subsumed — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1242 (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• The non-identical can only be approached through concepts without being subsumed #corroborates (0.90) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1242
• Identity is constructed through opposition to a continuously reinterpreted other #expands (0.85)
• Identity is defined oppositionally, against those one is not. #expands (0.85)
• Identity is internally mediated by the non-identical #corroborates (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1223
• Identity is constituted through exclusion of what it is not #expands (0.85)
• Without destruction of prior form, identity cannot sustain itself. #corroborates (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 245
• Identity can only be understood through difference, never self-sameness #expands (0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1189
• Modern identity is constituted through the exclusion of its own opposite #expands (0.80)
• The principle of identity is fundamentally a principle of thought itself #contradicts (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1230
• Thought requires deliberate self-distancing because reality resists being understood directly #corroborates (0.75)
• Identity is a contradictory, multi-discursive, non-closed totality #expands (0.75)
• Identity must be theorized as simultaneously fixed by and escaping meaning. #expands (0.75) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 222
• Thinking must hold dialectic and its opposite together at once #corroborates (0.70) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 170
• Philosophy’s task is resisting the status quo’s suggestive compulsion #corroborates (0.70)