Nonidentity, Negative Experience and the Pre‐Reflective Cogito

This paper contributes to the current academic debate on the nature of embodied, intentional consciousness, specifically the attempt to inaugurate a rapprochement between phenomenological existentialism and critical theory. This is accomplished through a critical comparison of the concepts of negative experience and nonidentity in T heodor A dorno's negative dialectics and J ean‐ P aul S artre's early phenomenology. By comparing how each engages with H egel, I suggest that S artre offers a broad, anthropological account of negative experience and nonidentity helpful to critical theorists but that there remains a critical deficit which A dorno's more restricted—and political—sense of nonidentity remedies. S artre's anthropological portrayal of ‘persistent negation’ worries A dorno but I suggest that it can be understood as a pragmatic presupposition for problem‐solving rather than as a transcendental condition of experience.