There is a well known danger in compartmentalising that can be expressed as:
“Categorise it (or him/her), label it and put it on the shelf – oh yes, here comes another one, I know all about those, stick it with the first.”
The entity becomes the label, and the danger is the label never changes because we use the label as an identifier that means we no longer have to think about the entity in a qualitative or analytical way. We’ve done that already. The label identifies certain attributes but may prevent us seeing any others that are present. An example of this kind of trap might be:
“He’s a communist, indict him.” “OK Senator, but he’s also a talented musician, what specific threat does he represent to us?” “Doesn’t matter, the label says communist.”
There is, using Anna’s words, the danger of “neatly compartmentalizing him into a single, one-dimensional, easy-to-understand box.”
A label as a short hand way of defining a set of characteristics is fine and helps us communicate faster and more efficiently but only so long as it defines the characteristics and not the entity. I think.
