Overview

Through a variety of studies in the emerging field of attentional studies, this book examines and seeks alternatives to the current attention economy. Bringing together the work of leading scholars of ‘critical attention studies’ to reflect on issues such as techno-politics, socio-politics, and the politics of distraction, it offers a new and multi-disciplinary conceptualization of attention that emphasizes the connections between attention and curiosity, distraction, decoloniality and care. Above all, The Politics of Curiosity asks us to consider the nature and ambivalence of the curious forms of politics that might be taking shape in the shadow of our current attention economy. The “attention economy” has become a household name: we all know our attention is being harvested, commodified and packaged to be sold to advertisers by capitalist platforms. We all complain about it; some of us dream of disconnection; others call to fight back. By focusing on attentional deficits, and by reducing attention to being focused, however, the common view may miss wider stakes, and more promising opportunities. This collective volume provides a new frame of analysis based on three displacements. First, it relocates attentional issues within a triangulation that explores a continuum between attention, distraction and curiosity. Second, it invites us to investigate into the mental infrastructures that socially condition our perceptions and understandings of the world. Third, it points towards emancipatory politics of curiosity to provide alternatives to the attention economy. Contributions range from pedagogy to media theory, via digital studies, epistemology, sociology, political philosophy, literary history, aesthetics, film and dance studies. They gather some of the leading scholars who shaped the study of attention, questioned the values of distraction and explored the potentials of curiosity over the recent years. They extend across nine countries, four continents and seven languages, to provide a multicultural approach to these debates. Together, they help us understand how our current mental infrastructures have taken shape, under specific regimes of power and authority, in a world dominated by capital, colonialism and patriarchy. But they also sketch what can be done to redeploy them around imperatives of respect and care – from a better awareness of our mental biases, online behaviors and bodily movements, to our collective capacity to restructure classroom interactions, to launch alternative digital platforms, to build democratic movements. The first platform for discussion of the politics of attention and curiosity – and an essential point of reference for future debate – this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, politics and psychology.

Full Product Details

Author:   Enrico Campo (University of Milan, Italy) ,  Yves Citton (University of Paris 8, France)
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   1.390kg
ISBN:  

9781032512983

ISBN 10:   1032512989
Pages:   238
Publication Date:   26 April 2024
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Introduction Attention, Distraction and Curiosity: Remantling our Mental Infrastructures Part I: Critical Views on Attention 1. Quick Bites: Short-Form Attention in the Era of Platform Capitalism 2. The Socio-Cognitive Politics of Curiosity and Attention 3. On the Historical Co-Construction of “Good” Attention and “Bad” Curiosity 4. Two Attacks on Attention 5. A Writing Workshop: Arts of Joint Attention, Curiosity and Care in University Part II: Digital Mental Infrastructures 6. Curiosity among the Ruins of Homo Faber: Infrastructural Capitalism and the Politics of Care 7. The Drift of Attention Regimes in the Age of Digital Platforms: When Curiosity Was Taken Over by Reputation 8. The Digital Market of Interests and Feelings Part III: Praises of Distraction 9. Distraction and its Doppelgangers 10. Art and the Power of Distraction: Bergson, Benjamin, and Simone Weil 11. Curious Entities of Attentive Distraction Part IV: Promises of Curiosities 12. From the Economy of Attention to the Politics of Curiosity 13. Platforms of Curiosities: Weird Ways of Publishing Movies 14. Tribulations of Curiosity 15. On the Variety of Attentional Practices Postlude 16. Sticking with Speculation: A Practice in Noticing Attention

Reviews

“A compelling and essential collection of innovative and urgent explorations of the intertwined problems of attention, distraction and curiosity” Jonathan Crary, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory, Columbia University, USA and author of Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture (1999) “This exciting volume brings together scholars, artists, and critics from a wide gamut of fields, with a diverse array of interests and approaches. Together, collaboratively, they reveal to us the surprising depths of the theoretical problem of attention, as also the alarming depth of the current political and economic crisis of attention. This book is bound to change the way we navigate these depths, and may even help us, if we pay it the attention it deserves, to find a way out of the crisis.” Justin Smith-Ruiu, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, Université Paris Cité, France and co-editor of Scenes of Attention (2023)

Author Information

Enrico Campo is a research fellow of Sociology in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Milan, Italy. His research interests include sociological theory, sociology of knowledge and the study of the relations among culture, technology and cognition. He is the author of Attention and its Crisis in Digital Society (Routledge, 2022), and co-editor of Exploring the Crisis. Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Investigations (2015). Yves Citton is Professor of Literature and Media at the University of Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis, France. His work explores the political imagination of Western modernity through dialogue between Enlightenment texts and contemporary political philosophy. He is author of Mediarchy (2019) and The Ecology of Attention (2016) and co-editor of the French journal Multitudes. His website is www.yvescitton.net and includes numerous open-access articles.

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