The Problem Of Distraction

This book examines distraction not as the mere opposite of attention, but as discontinuous intellect involving repeated, causeless blackouts of mind.

It presents the first genealogy of the concept from Aristotle to early twentieth-century thinkers like Kafka, Heidegger, and Benjamin, who sought to revolutionize the humanities through distraction.

North argues that human experience is marked by radical breaks, making us receptive to what cannot yet be called experience, and that contemporary troubles cannot be solved by enhancing attention.