Reflexive meta-attention on one’s own habits is what makes attention genuinely individuating.

Evidence

Now, this voluntary attention is inextricably linked to a fourth level of individuation, whose wellspring is our reflexive attention. We are frequently brought to make our collective, joint and individual attention the object of a ‘meta-attention’ which makes us question the way in which we think about a particular fragment of reality, and the possibility that it may be considered differently. On such occasions, we are, therefore, ‘led to lead’ our own attention in an intentional and (more or less) reflexive way. As we saw in Chapter 7, our aesthetic and pedagogical experiences have precisely this vocation of opening up these kinds of spaces for meta-attentional reflection – and so catalysing our individuation. It is to the extent that it comes from an effort of reflection on our attentional habits, on their blind spots as well as their virtues, that our attention becomes properly ‘individuating’ – in the more demanding sense in which we are lifted from an individuation to which we are subjected to an individuation orientated towards what we value as our greatest good. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 496

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the fourth level of individuation as reflexive ‘meta-attention’ that reflects on one’s own attentional habits.
• XREF: Connects to Frankfurt School discourse on self-reflexivity and critique as a form of individual emancipation from false consciousness. — connects to: Outward attention gains extend inward to self-knowledge — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 73; Self-awareness exists chiefly to enable self-regulation — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 964

Broader Connections

• Outward attention gains extend inward to self-knowledge #expands (0.75) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 73
• Self-awareness exists chiefly to enable self-regulation #qualifies (0.70) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 964