Sentence:  Likewise, this trend in the public sphere to put "faces" on social problems has the paradoxical effect of making the faces generic and not individual: thus the <WSD>facializing</WSD> gesture that promotes identification across the spaces of alterity is, in effect, an equivocal challenge to shift the political and cultural boundaries of what will count politically as human. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  To put a face to; to give a face. (20th century)