Politics of Curiosity

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.

• 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

“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)"This edited, interdisciplinary collection aims to reframe the attention economy and identify alternatives to it by exploring the connections between attention, distraction, and curiosity and examining the “mental infrastructures” conditioned by “acquired habits, technical networks, sociopolitical institutions, and cultural schemas” (p. 1). Fifteen chapters grouped into sections titled “Critical Views on Attention,” “Digital Mental Infrastructures,” “Praises of Distraction,” and “Promises of Curiosities” address aspects of these aims from a variety of disciplinary viewpoints but ultimately lack cohesion. There is no unifying conclusion; the postlude is a “practice in noticing attention” that invites readers to take part in an exercise to explore their own attention and curiosity. While researchers and scholars may find selections from this volume useful, the writing is often dense and inaccessible to those newly exploring the topic."L. Skaggs, Illinois State University, CHOICE