Gabel, Peter

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Nova Law ReviewVolume 10, Issue 2 1986 Article 16The Politics of MeetingPeter Gabel∗∗Copyright c©1986 by the authors. Nova Law Review is produced by The Berkeley ElectronicPress (bepress). http://nsuworks.nova.edu/nlrThe Politics of MeetingPeter GabelPeter Gabel visited at CUNY Law School last year after havingspent ten years as a teacher and administrator at New College ofCalifornia School of Law, a public interest law school in SanFrancisco. He is a member of the organizing committee of theConference on Critical Legal Studies. This article was first printedin the New College Law School Newspaper, "Minimum Contact."A woman on a plane said to me recently, "Never say anything youdon't want to create." The deep point of this to me is that the way Imanifest myself to you determines to some important extent what youcan feel is real or possible, and that the way you manifest yourself tome constricts or expands my horizon in the same way. In relation toeach other we each become "one of the others," and in so doing weshape each other's experience. This leads to some perceptions about thereality we create at law school meetings.The Problem of Collective DenialWe are all frightened of groups larger than five people. This maybe because our conditioning has been so isolating and our experience ofcommunity so rare. In a society where common trust is only taken as agiven among families of blood relatives (and then usually in a distortedform), we each instinctively respond to public gatherings by trying toprotect ourselves against an expected rejection by others. We do this bydenying others access to our real selves, through various forms of with-drawal (for example, silence or speech-making). But in denying othersaccess to ourselves, each of us becomes one of the rejecting others tothe others. The circle of collective denial is that each of us, in our ca-pacity as "one of the others," creates the fearful group of others thateach of us is afraid of.The way to combat this collective flight is to refuse to help to cre-ate it.1Gabel: The Politics of MeetingPublished by NSUWorks, 1986Nova Law JournalUs-Them ThinkingUs-Them thinking consists of perpetually inventing a "them" toblame for the group's paralysis - "the deans," or "the students," forexample. The argument always comes down to "we can't do anythingbecause of 'them'." And the effect of this is to prevent anything veryreal from happening out of fear of "them," or worse, out of fear ofbeing found out as "one of them." People become very careful aboutwhat they say and this creates the impression that one should be verycareful about what one says.Like "the Russians," "they" do not exist as a "them" unless every-one agrees to give everyone else the impression that they do. And thisgoes for the "sacred thems," too: racists, sexists, homophobics. The keyis to not want to take isolated remarks as signs of a "them" that isn'tthere because this is what leads to our recurring vision of Armageddon:reciprocally projected us-them fantasies followed by hallucinatorythem-wars.~KCompulsion to voteObsession with ProcedureObsession with procedure is designed to block the flow of groupfeeling by claiming the group isn't property constituted. Behind theseprocedural debates one can usually find two main ideas, both of whichare based on us-them thinking.One idea is that the group exists in order to reach a series of dis-[Vol. 102Nova Law Review, Vol. 10, Iss. 2 [1986], Art. 16http://nsuworks.nova.edu/nlr/vol10/iss2/16Gabelcrete decisions. These decisions are reached by breaking up into a se-ries of isolated individuals and voting. The second idea is that each sub-grouping that defines itself through its difference from everyone else inthe school must be "represented" by an exact number of voting units.Taken together, the two ideas reflect an expectation of "showdowns"and so help to create them.Groups are not really collections of isolated individuals. Each hasits own distinct social reality. One such reality is the group whosemembers experience themselves as isolated individuals and who rein-force their common solitude through the circle of collective denial. Butwe can create more relaxed groups in which people feel more connectedto each other through working on common projects. Obsession withprocedure is mainly intended, unconsciously, to cope with the risk ofnon-connection by making sure that the attempt is not made.The real work of committees is not to vote on a series of discreteissues, but to develop this common feeling through interesting, non-paranoid discussions and through taking common action to affect theschool environment for the better. For this to really happen, it's impor-tant to involve different groups who may not fully trust each other orunderstand each other's experience and needs. The objective should beto overcome existing antagonisms and not to maintain them, as us-themthinking tries to do. Voting once in a while is okay, but an excessivefocus on voting, "representation," and "protecting everyone's rights"only reinforces the impression that the differences among us are fixed.The Role of the ChairOvercoming all this takes discipline and practice. It requires be-coming aware of how your behavior affects everyone else and then notwanting to do it anymore and then, eventually, not doing it. Since ittakes a while to even become conscious of how each of us becomes another for each other, much less for this awareness to ricochet into acritical mass that can dissolve collective denial, the chairperson mustperpetually prevent the group from snowballing into general panic. Hisor her role should be something like a conscience.This means: a) ordering and moving the agenda so as to maximizediscussion on interesting issues; b) intervening to bring the ground intofocus whenever anxiety starts to get out of hand; c) allowing a mix ofspontaneous exchanges and calling on people who have raised theirhands; and d) helping tentative people to speak and people who speak1986]3Gabel: The Politics of MeetingPublished by NSUWorks, 1986Nova Law Journal [Vol. 10too much to quiet down. It's not so much a matter of learning a set ofskills as it is of keeping a pulse.DOONESBURYCoygh, A975, AV.Bigh O OF e ."Copyright, 1975, G.B.rights reserved."by Garry TrudeauTrudeau. Reprinted with permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All4Nova Law Review, Vol. 10, Iss. 2 [1986], Art. 16http://nsuworks.nova.edu/nlr/vol10/iss2/16

The Politics of Meeting

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