Attention may be the last resource people can withdraw

Evidence

Occupying the “third space” within the attention economy is important not just because, as I’ve argued, individual attention forms the basis for collective attention and thus for meaningful refusal of all kinds. It is also important because in a time of shrinking margins, when not only students but everyone else has “put the pedal to the metal,” and cannot afford other kinds of refusal, attention may be the last resource we have left to withdraw. In a cycle where both financially driven platforms and overall precarity close down the space of attention—the very attention needed to resist this onslaught, which then pushes further—it may be only in the space of our own minds that some of us can begin to pull apart the links. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 344

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out the vicious cycle of precarity closing down attention needed to resist precarity — core to positioning attention-withdrawal as refusal rather than mere retreat.