The modern individual identity emerged precisely to sever sacrifice’s claim to represent the group

Evidence

The individual—the self—is man no longer credited with the magical power of representation. The establishment of the self cuts through that fluctuating relation with nature that the sacrifice of the self claims to establish. Every sacrifice is a restoration belied by the actual historical situation in which it occurs. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 61

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Milgrom’s account of how institutions reproduce earlier social logics — here the ‘self’ reproduces the sacrificial structure it claims to have superseded.
• DEFINE: Defines how sacrifice functions as representation (‘Stellvertretung’) — a key critical-theory concept.