The December 2001 Argentine protests become, in the book’s account, an “ontological comedy”: as demonstrators threatened economy minister Cavallo, he fled behind a mask of his own face. The disguise did not simply conceal him. Because the mask was already sold in disguise shops so people could mock him by wearing it, Cavallo escaped through the very image by which he was ridiculed. The episode gives concrete form to the book’s claim that a thing can become its own best mask.

Protest and Escape

In December 2001, Argentinians took to the streets to protest against the current government, with particular anger directed at Cavallo, the economy minister. When the crowd gathered around his building and threatened to storm it, he escaped wearing a mask of himself. The account establishes a threat and an escape, not that the building was stormed or that Cavallo was confronted by the crowd.

A Mask That Conceals and Exposes

The mask’s significance lies in its double use. It served as Cavallo’s disguise, but it was also sold in disguise shops for people to wear in order to mock him. His escape therefore depended on an image that already carried the protest’s ridicule: the likeness hid the minister even as it made him recognizable as its target. The reversal turns a practical flight into a public irony, without changing the mask’s familiar appearance.

Appearance and Self-Difference

The book treats this episode as a case in which reality, placed within a frame, becomes its own appearance. Cavallo’s mask does not introduce a different figure so much as repeat Cavallo in a form that both represents and distances him. The episode thus illustrates the text’s distinction between simple repetition and pure difference: the difference is not merely between Cavallo and other people, but between Cavallo and his own image. The mask’s force comes from that reflexive turn—an attempted disguise that cannot escape the meaning already attached to the face it reproduces.