Table of Contents

Introduction
1. "Jazz , the Wound": Negative Identity, Culture, and the Shadow of Race
2. America; or, the Stranger
3. Negative Identities of the Subject in Wartime America
4. Critical Theory Goes to War: The Critique of Positive Identity and Positive Science
5. Negative Modeling: Objectivity, Normativity, and the Refusal of the Universal
6. Subject/Object and Disciplinarity
7. Conclusion

About the Author

Eric Oberle is Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University.

Reviews

"An indispensable contribution to the history and theory of the concept of identity in the twentieth century, Eric Oberle's book has convinced me that Adorno's wrestling with this question not only permits but requires a reinterpretation of the whole body of his work."—Gerald Izenberg, Professor Emeritus, Washington University in St. Louis "The historical and philosophical literature on Adorno is abundant, and the bar is high for new work. With a mix of persuasive analysis, meticulous research, and astute commentary, Eric Oberle's book clears it."—Warren Breckman, University of Pennsylvania "In a work of boundless ambition and comparable achievement, which combines close reading of familiar texts and synoptic intellectual histories that bring together unfamiliar texts, The Century of Negative Identity shows just how indebted the Frankfurt School, particularly Adorno and Horkheimer, was to its time in America."—Corey Robin, crookedtimber.org "Oberle's book is full of pathbreaking insights rendered in a dense, fast-paced but crystalline prose. Written for an audience of intellectual historians, it nevertheless speaks directly to all of us as we grapple with the contemporary 'interconnections among racism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of prejudice.'"—James Loeffler, Marginalia, Los Angeles Review of Books