Small concentrated encounters keep participants’ plurality intact and generate power

Evidence

Basically, the space of appearance is an encounter small and concentrated enough that the plurality of its actors is un-collapsed. The dynamism of this plural encounter is what underwrites the possibility of power; we know this intuitively from the form of the dialogue, where the interplay of two arguments leads to something new. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 598

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the space of appearance as an encounter scaled to keep plurality ‘un-collapsed’.
• XREF: connects to: Physical contact humanizes opponents and enables depolarization — Didier Caluwaerts et al., Deliberation and Polarization: A…, 123