Beyond Negated Identity: Mediating the World History Classroom Through Adorno's Negative Dialectics

• In Event: Sustaining and Protecting Democracy

Abstract

This paper turns to Adorno’s negative dialectics to help answer the following questions: How can one attend to difference within world history in a manner that does not essentialize difference? For teachers with many students of color, how can one address experiences of marginalization without essentializing that experience into an identity of inferiority? Adorno’s negative dialectics helps in three ways: First, negative dialectics breaks the normative dialectical habit of folding difference into identity of the universal narrative. Second, negative dialectics does not merely turn difference into a new identity but emphasizes the relationality through Adorno’s non-identity. Third, Adorno’s negative dialectics emphasizes mediating the experience of negation towards a capacity to see the wreckage and break through the teleological narrative.

Author

• Tadashi Dozono, California State University - Channel Islands
  Presenting Author