The Ecology of Attention PDF
Preview The Ecology of Attention
The Ecology of Attention To the Kolkata family, those who left, those who remain The Ecology of Attention Yves Citton Translated by Barnaby Norman polity First published in French as Pour une écologie de l’attention, © Éditions du Seuil, 2014 This English edition © Polity Press, 2017 P. viii, ‘2 + 2 = 5’. Words and music by Thomas Edward Yorke, Philip James Selway, Edward John O’Brien, Jonathan Richard Guy Greenwood and Colin Charles Greenwood © Warner/Chappell Music Ltd (PRS). All rights administered by WB Music Corp. Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-0372-8 (hardback) ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-0373-5 (paperback) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Citton, Yves, author. Title: The ecology of attention / Yves Citton. Other titles: Pour une ?ecologie de l’attention. English Description: English edition. | Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016020587| ISBN 9781509503728 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781509503735 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Attention--Social aspects. | Perceptual learning. Classification: LCC HM1176 .C5713 2016 | DDC 153.7/33--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016020587 Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Sabon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, by Croydon, CRO 4YY The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com CONTENTS Acknowledgements page vi Foreword ix Introduction: From Attention Economy to Attention Ecology 1 Part I Collective Attention 25 1 Media Enthralments and Attention Regimes 27 2 Attentional Capitalism 44 3 The Digitalization of Attention 63 Part II Joint Attention 81 4 Presential Attention 83 5 The Micro-Politics of Attention 106 Part III Individuating Attention 123 6 Attention in Laboratories 125 7 Reflexive Attention 139 Conclusion: Towards an Attention Echology 171 Notes 200 Name Index 219 Subject Index 222 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many thanks to Emmanuel Alloa, Alejandro Alvarez, Emily Apter, Maryvonne Arnaud, Bernard Aspe, Marc Bacchetta, Thierry Bardini, Christine Baron, Sarina Basta, Jacques Berchtold, Laurent Bigorgne, Aurélien Blanchard, Jean-Pierre Bobillot, Véronique Bolhuis, Robert Bonamy, Daniel Bougnoux, Dominique Boullier, Patrick Bourgne, Sylvain Bourmeau, Frédéric Brun, Graham Burnett, Rosemary and Gilbert Citton, Jonathan Crary, Isabelle Creusot, Jérôme David, Christophe Degoutin, Xavier de la Porte, Georges Didi-Huberman, Estelle Doudet, Marianne Dubacq, François-Ronan Dubois, Cédric Duroux, Rita Felski, Georg Franck, Igor Galligo, Aurélien Gamboni, Florent Gaudez, Mélanie Giraud, Francis Goyet, Michael Hagner, Christophe Hanna, Pierre Hazan, Denis Hollier, Michel Jeanneret, Dominiq Jenvrey, Nedjima Kacidem, Deborah Knopp, Charlotte Krauss, Isabelle Krzywkowski, Jean-Pierre Lachaux, Marina and all the Kundu family, Daniel Lançon, Catherine Langle, Raphaël et Catherine Larrère, Bruno Latour, Benoît Laureau, Maurizio Lazzarato, Pierre Le Quéau, Fabienne Martin-Juchat, Jean-François Massol, Éric Méchoulan, Varinia Michalun, Bernard Miège, Rajarshi et Ranjini Mitra, Valeria Morera, Philippe Mouillon, Yann Moulier Boutang, Romi Mukherjee, the editorial committee of the journal Multitudes, Carole Musset, Frédéric Neyrat, Laura von Niederhäusern, Christine Noille-Clauzade, Charlotte Nordmann, François Noudelmann, Françoise Notter-Truxa, The Order of the Third Bird, Isabelle Pailliart, the participants in the Économie de l’attention et archéologie des media seminars at the Université de Grenoble, Matteo Pasquinelli, Jean-François Perrin, Philippe Petit, Dominique Pety, Julien Piat, Julien Pierre, Claire Pignol, Martial Poirson, Catherine Quéloz, Anne Querrien, Dominique Quessada, Anne-Julie Raccoursier, Gene Ray, vi acknowledgements Philippe Régnier, le Revue des livres, Julie Ridard, Claudia Roda, Stéphanie Roussel, Dario Rudy, Liliane Schneiter, Jean-Paul Sermain, Jean-Claude Serres, the Settembrini family, Adrien Staii, Bernard Stiegler, Henry Torgue, Isabelle Treff, Nicolas Truong, Urs Urban, Marco Venturini, Jérôme Vidal, the team of the Villa Gillet, Slaven Waelti, Guy Walter, Olivier Zerbib. Very special thanks to Hugues Jallon and Bruno Auerbach for helping me to frame and realize this project. Are you such a dreamer To put the world to rights? I’ll stay home forever Where two and two always makes up five I’ll lay down the tracks, sandbag and hide January has April’s showers And two and two always makes up five It’s the devil’s way now There is no way out You can scream and you can shout It is too late now Because YOU HAVE NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION Radiohead, The Lukewarm (2 + 2 = 5) viii FOREWORD A book dealing with the exhaustion of our attentional resources is a living contradiction: it explains to you why you will not have had time to read it. Our house is on fire, from minor daily emer- gencies to climate imbalance – and often in conflicting ways, cou- pling one person’s drought with the prediction of another’s flood, threatening even entire cities like Kolkata. And we look elsewhere. We fail to read the writing getting ever bigger on the wall. Burn before reading! It would have been better to write a tweet, or a blog post for viral distribution – not a book, composed of sequential chapters and com- plete sentences. This either proves that we do not believe what we say: our attention is not as threatened, scattered, shattered and maimed as people claim. Or it is a futile effort: this book demonstrates that it cannot be read. We will have to hedge our bets. Go much too quickly and much too slowly at the same time. Write incomplete sentences that are already far too long. Go into the details and ignore essential points. Be simultaneously too inflexible, too pretentious, too learned, and too cavalier. In order to suggest different reading rhythms, the route will be punctuated by a hundred or so KEY-EXPRESSIONS, written in capitals, and accompanied on each occasion by a concise definition in italics. Readers in a hurry can gain an initial idea of the concepts dis- cussed in the chapter, and only linger over those which are of direct interest. Through this system, the book will put forward a battery of concepts, principles, maxims and hypotheses, for which it will seek to provide rigorous initial definitions – hoping in this way to furnish a more precise vocabulary with which to explore, decipher and ix
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