The Bank Teller and Other Essays on the Politics of Meaning

THE BANK TELLER explores the desire within each of us to overcome our isolation and to see and be seen by the other in a relation of authentic connectedness. Peter Gabel asserts that this desire for “mutual recognition” is the very foundation of our social being, and is as fundamental in the spiritual realm as the need for food and shelter is in the material realm. He shows how the fear of humiliation blocks our capacity to become fully present to each other and leads us to collectively reproduce an alienated and artificial society that isolates us from one another and from the capacity to fully experience the natural world. In a series of strikingly original essays, Gabel shows how “the opening up of desire” requires a fundamental challenge to our existing social institutions and a new political strategy that invents new forms of work, friendship, and community.