Who, we might ask in any given situation, controls whom? Who is sovereign over whom? Who benefits from adopting these categories—and who is victimized by them? In this light we can see that the creating of social taxonomies is a form of the mythmaking described in the previous chapter. Just as we cannot do without our metaphors and myths, we cannot do without social taxonomies. There are too many people! But we absolutely must remember what those taxonomies are: temporary, provisional intellectual structures whose relevance will not always be what it is, or seems to be, today.
