Sacrificial substitution anticipates but is destroyed by scientific fungibility

Evidence

In magic there is specific representation. What happens to the enemy’s spear, hair or name, also happens to the individual; the sacrificial animal is massacred instead of the god. Substitution in the course of sacrifice marks a step toward discursive logic. Even though the hind offered up for the daughter, and the lamb for the first-born, still had to have specific qualities, they already represented the species. They already exhibited the non-specificity of the example. But the holiness of the hic et nunc, the uniqueness of the chosen one into which the representative enters, radically marks it off, and makes it unfit for exchange. Science prepares the end of this state of affairs. In science there is no specific representation: and if there are no sacrificial animals there is no god. Representation is exchanged for the fungible—universal interchangeability. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 37

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the ‘On Sacrifice’ article — Adorno’s account of substitution in sacrifice is a theoretical companion to Dido, suttee, and the Royal Tombs of Ur.
• ADDENDUM: Offers a theoretical hinge for ‘On Sacrifice’: the shift from uniquely chosen victim to fungible specimen as the birth of exchange logic.
• DEEPTHINKING: Braids sacrifice, exchange, individuation, and scientific objectification into one dense causal claim about the cost of Enlightenment.