Rich aesthetic attention requires tolerating delayed understanding

Evidence

The drawing out of the treatment of the linguistic signal due to the maximizing of attentional investment, does not produce only an attentional overloading, but also a delay in categorization, which is to say, a delay in the activity of hermeneutic synthesis (we accept that we will not understand ‘straight away’). And this delayed categorization is always experienced as a dissonance, since it thwarts the principle of economy that seeks cognitive consonance. The capacity an individual has to give their sustained attention to the sonorous materiality of a text is, therefore, proportional to their capacity to tolerate situations of delayed categorization. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 433

Categorization

• XREF: Ties into the author’s broader attention work and general accounts of slow, decelerated reading. — connects to: Aesthetic experience succeeds or fails on attentional quality, not object traits — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 431; Attention is judged by its blooms, not its duration — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 385; Prolonged attention transforms what initially seems boring (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Introduces ‘delay in categorization’ as the defining mechanism of aesthetic attention.

Broader Connections

• Prolonged attention transforms what initially seems boring #expands (0.80)
• Attention is judged by its blooms, not its duration #qualifies (0.75) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 385