Nostalgic championing of deep reading risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy of its decline

Evidence

In our reflections on the developments of our individual attention, the orientation of our analyses is as important as their object. In keeping with the works of George Steiner, the championing of books, literature and the humanities has usually taken a nostalgic tone, clinging to the remains of an experience of deep reading that is heading towards extinction to decry the superficiality and the illusions to which our new ‘post-literary’ spirit is victim. But this analytical orientation is not only debatable from the perspective of our historical knowledge; it above all risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 416

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that a defensive, backward-looking defence of reading composes its own decline inverts the standard humanities-versus-digital framing and rewards sitting with it.
• SEED: Essay angle: how nostalgia as intellectual strategy manufactures the very extinction it mourns — a performative theory of cultural decline.