Political unity is strengthened rather than weakened by divergent attentions

Evidence

Emancipatory distraction, stepping back and stepping to one side encourage a POLITICS OF CONVIVIAL DISSENSUS, where the attentional ecosystem happily welcomes conflicts for their stimulating effects of pluralism, without allowing minor differences to obscure the general direction in which the whole is heading. How is it possible not to agree (while continuing to stay) with one another? Such is the challenge of political organization which reflection on joint attention may help us to take up – given that the strength of its ‘conjunction’ comes precisely from the fact that not everyone is looking in the same direction. Learning to be attentive to what preoccupies the other, being concerned for it so as to maintain the collective dynamic, without for all that allowing oneself to become obsessed by details or allowing emotions to get carried away – this requires an ability to reconcile the apparently contradictory demands of an attachment based in care and a detachment based in free-floating attention. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 347

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the core term ‘politics of convivial dissensus’ — the chapter’s central concept — and distinguishes it from organic unity.
• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the author’s own attention-economy material; the ‘not everyone looking in the same direction’ complementarity complements the trees-as-infrastructure piece’s grafting metaphor of separate entities forming one support.
• XREF: connects to: Radicals and managers jointly expand collective attention through their conflict. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 319; Joint attention practices generate shared political power.; Attentional exploitation can be transformed into a basis for collective political identity (+15 more)

Broader Connections

• Exposure to opposing political views often increases rather than reduces polarization. #complicates (0.85) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 1475
• Joint attention practices generate shared political power. #corroborates (0.82)
• Media balance reproduces the shared presuppositions that bracket political disagreement #complicates (0.80)
• Friendship’s collapse reduced shared perception of objects to political stalemate #contradicts (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 785
• Attentional exploitation can be transformed into a basis for collective political identity #corroborates (0.78)
• Multiple coexisting temporalities, not just homogeneous time, shape political responses. #expands (0.75)
• Unified political identity functions as a defense against divide-and-rule. #corroborates (0.75)
• Pan-movements united members through mood rather than defined political goals #corroborates (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 574
• Counterfactual hypotheses can refocus attention on present political possibilities. #exemplifies (0.72) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 760