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feeling_queer 's review for:
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
by Jenny Odell
The title of this book is really a misnomer; as Odell points out, her argument isn’t to “do nothing” but to resist a highly individualized, itemized, capitalist way of directing our attention towards productivity. She critiques colonialist practices of reducing a person, item, or thing’s values to its usefulness, alienation from the earth and each other, and the ways that social media strips away context and nuance and thrives on commodifying our behaviors. She asks that we are more mindful of how we direct our attention; that we slow down, are present, and deeply listen. For Odell, a lot of this is place-based—getting to know the ecoregion you live in, being able to name surrounding animals and plants, and recognizing yourself as part of this system. While she is sympathetic to the desire to want to unplug and run away, she ultimately argues that we need to figure out a “third space” or other ways of being present to different types of attention while not fully disconnecting from social media or society at large. She of course notes that is often people with privilege who are able to have some control over their attention; and thus there is a responsibility to improving our collective conditions. (I appreciate her point that although this may be a right reserved for privilege people, doesn’t make it any less of a right to aspire towards).
I gave this book less than 4 stars because a lot of it hit on concepts that I’m already familiar with — I recognize the irony of engaging with this book through a lens of its use-value to me — but nevertheless I found myself skimming a lot of the second half of the book. While I really loved her personal anecdotes about bird-watching and the inclusion of different performance pieces, I would have liked to see more inclusion and engagement with indigenous and asian world views; a lot of the discussions center around greek/European philosophy and Anglo-American writers.
I gave this book less than 4 stars because a lot of it hit on concepts that I’m already familiar with — I recognize the irony of engaging with this book through a lens of its use-value to me — but nevertheless I found myself skimming a lot of the second half of the book. While I really loved her personal anecdotes about bird-watching and the inclusion of different performance pieces, I would have liked to see more inclusion and engagement with indigenous and asian world views; a lot of the discussions center around greek/European philosophy and Anglo-American writers.