The Problem of Distraction - by Paul North (Paperback)

About the Book

Rejecting the current conflation of distraction with diversion, this book presents the first genealogy of the concept from Aristotle to Kafka, Heidegger, and Benjamin's early twentieth-century use of distraction to revolutionize the humanities.

Book Synopsis

Rejecting the current conflation of distraction with diversion, this book presents the first genealogy of the concept from Aristotle to Kafka, Heidegger, and Benjamin's early twentieth-century use of distraction to revolutionize the humanities.

Review Quotes

"North situates distraction as a fundamental question whose long history of being ignored is witness to the challenge it posed in a century, the twentieth, when distraction itself became more than a fact of experience: it became a fact of existence. This superb analysis of distraction and our lack of attention to it breaks significant new ground in our critical history."--David Ferris "University of Colorado"

"This thoughtful, original, and timely study asks not only what distraction is, but also what would be involved in theorizing the interpretive framework through which an interrogation of distraction would first became thinkable. It will be significant to scholars in German Studies and European Critical Thought, as well as to those interested in the conditions and possibilities of repressed, abjected modes of thought more generally."--Gerhard Richter "University of California, Davis"

"With his thorough treatment of various concepts of distraction through the centuries, North contributes to the understanding of the complex nature of human thoughtValuable for scholars of literature and philosophy."--R. C. Conard "Choice"

About the Author

Paul North is Assistant Professor of German at Yale University.