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The conversion of humanity to image, icon, not via the proverbial gaze but via the categorisation of difference — difference so profoundly threatening for it characterises equality, yet also might let us the most supreme violence. The more we compartmentalize, the less we demand of ourselves that essential engagement with human complexity, and rely instead on the frequent fallibility of base markers: race, gender, class, culture. And so following a teasing apart of one's humanity by differentiation, a person undergoes that total surgical — if metaphorical — recreation of the self as victim: that ultimate Other isolated even from its own society. My makeover was a cruel distrust of all comments on my image, and the compulsion to change that image as often as possible to trip up even the eyes of those closest to me: i.e., a year of hair oscillating between blue, purple, black, white. Baggy, high-necked clothes belied my dread of exposure. Where do we site the unspeakable if not in ourselves? To what effect?
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