Adorno and Horkheimer argue that late capitalism is dominated by what they call identity thinking which (as we mentioned in relation to positivism) is the belief that things are as they appear in their immediacy. Against identity exists does not have to be as it is. Things are not given and it is not possible to understand them simply through a process of classification. Rather, things are contradictory and can be other than what they are. Therefore: ‘The task of cognition does consist in mere apprehension, classification and calculation, but in the determinate negation of each immediacy’ (Adorno and Horkheimer 1986 : 27)