Attention is the foundational faculty for all meaningful refusal.

Evidence

That’s because attention undergirds every other kind of meaningful refusal: it allows us to reach Thoreau’s higher perspective, and forms the basis of a disciplined collective attention that we see in successful strikes and boycotts whose laser-like focus withstood all the attempts to disassemble them. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 327

THERE ARE MANY “systemic abuses” to be refused at the moment, but I propose that one great place to start is the abuse of our attention. That’s because attention undergirds every other kind of meaningful refusal: it allows us to reach Thoreau’s higher perspective, and forms the basis of a disciplined collective attention that we see in successful strikes and boycotts whose laser-like focus withstood all the attempts to disassemble them. But in today’s mediascape, it’s hard to imagine what refusal looks like on the level of attention. For example, when I mention to anyone that I’m thinking about “resisting the attention economy,” their first response is “Cool, so, like, quitting Facebook?” (usually followed by musings on the impossibility of leaving Facebook). — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 327

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is core to Odell’s argument that attention isn’t withdrawal but the basis of political refusal — central to defending against the title misreading.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that attention undergirds strikes and boycotts reframes attention as a collective political faculty, not a private aesthetic one.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 327