Attentional politics claims to prefigure the overthrow of spectacle society.

Evidence

No-one embodied (and struggled with) this deadlock more than Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. In his dreadful lassitude and objectless rage, Cobain seemed to give wearied voice to the despondency of the generation that had come after history, whose every move was anticipated, tracked, bought and sold before it had even happened. Cobain knew that he was just another piece of spectacle, that nothing runs better on MTV than a protest against MTV; knew that his every move was a cliché scripted in advance, knew that even realizing it is a cliché. The impasse that paralyzed Cobain is precisely the one that Jameson described: like postmodern culture in general, Cobain found himself in ‘a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, [where] all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum’. Here, even success meant failure, since to succeed would only mean that you were the new meat on which the system could feed. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 24 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Attentional exploitation can be transformed into a basis for collective political identity; Self-aware rebellion against spectacle is itself absorbed and commodified — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 24; Joint attention practices generate shared political power.

Broader Connections

• Self-aware rebellion against spectacle is itself absorbed and commodified #qualifies (0.85) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 24
• Joint attention practices generate shared political power. #expands (0.75)
• Attentional exploitation can be transformed into a basis for collective political identity #expands (0.70)