This guy who got a face transplant, they say that the face came from an anonymous donor. First, let’s consider the face transplant. Apparently he was in some sort of accident and was so disfigured that his young daughter was too freightened to look at him. So “face transplant” sounds weird, but I get the transformational aspect of that.
What I don’t get is the anonymous part. Granted, I heard this story on the radio, but you have to figure that somebody is going to recognize the face, right? That’s not really anonymous. At least not in the sense of not being recognized. And even though I have not taken the spectacularly small step of googling the subject, I feel sure there are some pictures floating around out there. If there are pictures of what is beneath a Scotsman’s kilt – and there are – then there are pictures of face transplant dude.
So he is sure to be recognized. But there is another aspect to anonymity, because you can see a person but not know them. Or vice versa. You could know a person and never see them. Without getting too Rumsfeldian, you could see a person and not recognize that you know them. Being anonymous doesn’t mean you can’t be known or that you are trying to hide. It just means that you can’t be known simply by those things by which you are recognized.