A discourse of identity is by its very nature exclusionary.
From the very first moment that man nodded in the general direction of an object—an act we would later attach to the word “this”—he was erecting a pattern of exclusion: this object, by way of my verbal nomination of its artificial singularity, is distinct. And the exclusion is reflexive: the multiplicity from which the “this” has been subtracted by the action of the word now stands in relation to itself and to all else as “not this”.
This is important to consider when on the subject of geeks, since we should not for a minute assume “geek” is a label restricted to those who fared well in high school A/P Calculus, ran the lighting booth in the drama club, and stayed after school for the LARPing society. “Geek” is merely a foil for the more difficult to pronounce “pariah”, a social phenomenon inherently bound up in any discourse which derives its inertia from negation. And because of the reflexivity of this negation, the pariah must all the more vocally establish its Other in order to assume an identity of its own. We become the pariah to as many people as we may consider the same.
This simple function of language is complicated by the fact that power structures emerge according to these same patterns, and so exclusionary tactics are translated from the social to the political. And it is because reinforcing these divisions is often in the direct interest of the state that it becomes a subversive act to adopt a discourse of multiplicity: “sexual beings” as opposed to “heterosexuals and homosexuals”; “persons” as distinct from “men and women” or “white and black and Latino”; “human beings” instead of “citizens and aliens”.
