Creatures of Attention: Aesthetics and the Subject before Kant

Creatures of Attention explores the early modern prehistory of our late modern crises of attention, examining control over attention as the cultural technique underpinning the ideal of individual autonomy. It challenges the Enlightenment paradigm of strained attention by presenting pre-Kantian aesthetics as a critique, offering a fresh perspective on poetics and aesthetics in eighteenth-century Germany.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 348 pages
Publication date: 15 June 2024
Publisher: Cornell University Press

Creatures of Attention delves into the early modern prehistory of our late modern crises of attention, exploring the philosophical and literary works from eighteenth-century Germany that shaped our modern understanding of attention, subjectivity, and aesthetics. Johannes Wankhammer examines control over attention as the cultural technique underpinning the ideal of individual autonomy, challenging the notion that attention defines subjectivity. While previous scholarship has focused on the erosion of subjectivity by industrial or technological modernization, Wankhammer asks how attention came to define subjectivity in the first place. When attention crises threaten the coherence of the subject, the subject comes undone at the seams that first sutured it together. Creatures of Attention offers the first systematic study of a foundational discourse on attention from 1650 to 1780, presenting pre-Kantian aesthetics as a critique of the Enlightenment paradigm of strained attention. It offers a fresh perspective on poetics and aesthetics in eighteenth-century Germany, shedding light on the complex relationship between attention, subjectivity, and the ideal of individual autonomy.

Weight: 907g
Dimension: 229 x 152 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781501775802