Waiting for Someone to Argue With

Abstract

While thumbing through Susan Sontag's copy of Theodor W. Adorno'sminima moralia, I found the stirrings of an argument. Sontag responded to Adorno's twenty-fourth fragment, “Tough Baby,” by writing “machismo ↓” next to the first line. Her annotations continue on the following page alongside Adorno's concluding remarks:In the end tough guys are truly effeminate ones, who need the weaklings as their victims in order not to admit that they are like them.Totalitarianism and homosexuality belong together.In its downfall the subject negates everything which is not of its own kind. The opposites of the strong man and the compliant youth merge inan order which asserts unalloyed the male principle of domination.In making all without expectation, even supposed subjects, its objects, this principle becomes totally passive, virtually feminine. (46)