Subjectivity requires physical proximity to other attentive bodies that media cannot replace.

Evidence

After having observed Earth from Saturn to understand the global flows of collective attention, after having analysed how the asymmetries of the capitalist attention economy inflate some of us beyond all human size, the study of attention in the present brings us back to a 1:1 scale. In order to construct itself, our subjectivity needs the sensitive proximity of attentive bodies experienced in physical presence: it is in intimate relation with their objects of attention, their emotional tones, their attractions and their repulsions – in that they traverse us and inhabit us through the effects of affective resonance – that we structure, orientate and sustain our personality. The attentional ecosystems offered by situations of dialogue, teaching or live performance owe their richness, among other things, to the very peculiar intensity that comes from setups establishing presence. Witnessing a gesture as it is happening in the fragility of its necessary improvisation, strengthening our affects thanks to crowd effects that carry what we feel beyond what we know, sensing the shine of the auratic stature of a performer while encountering them in the continuity of 1:1 scale – all of that, which contributes to the richness of conversation, of the classroom or theatre, is lost when we try to distribute its dried out skeleton in the form of MOOCs or televised theatre. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 303

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Benjamin’s aura concept and to Frankfurt School critique of mass reproduction — the live encounter preserves the auratic that mechanical media flattens. — connects to: Bodily proximity forces a sincerity that media stardom structurally cannot achieve. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 301; One cannot understand resistance apart from the embodied attachments a subjectivizing practice enables. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival…, 262; Narrative distance is a medium property that film cannot replicate. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 246 (+2 more)
• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to ‘Grafting & Growth’ argument about underused material forms — here the live performance/classroom is the ‘material’ the digital cannot substitute for.

Broader Connections

• Bodily proximity forces a sincerity that media stardom structurally cannot achieve. #corroborates (0.92) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 301
• One cannot understand resistance apart from the embodied attachments a subjectivizing practice enables. #expands (0.78) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 262
• Narrative distance is a medium property that film cannot replicate. #corroborates (0.72) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 246