I bought a book thinking it would teach me how to switch off before the holiday break. Instead, I came across a guide to making the revolution. (Christmas will be special this year.)
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (For idle resistance, Do nothing in the 21st centurye century) is an essay by Jenny Odell, a multidisciplinary artist who teaches at Stanford University. It moved me so much that I would like to present its main points to you.
The author believes that in a world where our worth is determined by our productivity, nothing is more difficult than doing nothing. In 2023, this is obvious, but the book published in 2019 has its share of new features. In fact, Jenny Odell writes quickly: “This book is a guide to doing nothing as a political gesture of resistance to the attention economy. » 1
(Not what I imagined for New Year’s Eve, but OK.)
The attention economy is this structure in which our attention is captured and monetized by large industries. Let’s think about social networks that do everything to keep us connected and generate income thanks to the precious time we give them.
Our attention is worth gold. To paraphrase Jenny Odell: today, we cannot afford to refuse much, for fear of insecurity. Our attention is perhaps the only resource we have left to replace capitalism.
But to redistribute it where?
Tehching Hsieh spent 1978 doing nothing. For Cage Piece, the artist locked himself in a 9-foot-square cage, forbidding himself from speaking, reading or writing. Years later, he would say that despite everything, “his mind was not in prison.”
The example is extreme, but the question is important: what happens to our attention when we completely remove it from the established framework?
In her essay, Jenny Odell recounts eloquent experiences. After attending a performance of 4’33”, a three-movement piece by John Cage in which the pianist plays nothing (!), she began to hear the ambient sounds of her city and experience it in a whole new way. On the bus, rather than looking at her cell phone, she began to observe the passengers, remembering that each of them has dreams and a rock in their shoe. Compassion was born. As well as becoming attentive to her environment, she also became interested in birds. The more she learned to name what was around her, the more she became involved in protecting nature.
Wandering through a town, a forest or a garden is not do nothing. Even if from a capitalist perspective, it’s worthless.
I also downloaded an application that the author recommends to help us identify the fauna and flora, iNaturalist. Because yes, she uses a smartphone! Jenny Odell is not very impressed by social networks, but for her, the problem is above all their commercial logic which transforms our “anxiety, desire and distraction” into profit… Leaving social networks is a luxury reserved for people whose capital social is very strong. For the author, it is therefore above all a question of resisting our reflexes. For example, she invites us to take a break before succumbing to clickbait and to “risk unpopularity by seeking context when our Facebook feed is full of unverified facts”.
Take a moment to do nothing in front of a publication, it is wise. Resorting to what Gilles Deleuze calls “the right to say nothing” is also important.
In a passage that particularly struck me, Jenny Odell reflects on the time it takes to figure out what to write on social media and then scrutinize the reactions we elicit: “What if we instead used that energy to say the right things? things to the right people at the right time? » Rather than shouting into the void, we could discuss in spaces dedicated to real discussions, whether they are physical or digital spaces.
The issue is not disconnection.
We could well try to escape the frameworks that govern our life in society, but Jenny Odell believes that we can also “believe in another world while living in this one”. For this, we sometimes have to devote our attention to activities which have no commercial nature, but which are more related to care…
In this day and age, having time and spaces to do nothing is critically important because without them, we have no way to think, reflect, heal and support ourselves – individually or collectively.
Jenny Odell, author and teacher at Stanford University
Our individual attention is essential to generating mass movements. It’s difficult to organize group actions when we are overwhelmed by an endless stream of diversions. Even if our Instagram feed is mainly made up of engaged publications…
“Since the content activists share online must be catchy, activists do not have the time and space to articulate their political thoughts,” writes Jenny Odell.
Especially since these publications unite a public under the influence of emotion much more than through a common vision. The links created by digital technology are weak, believes Veronica Barassi, author of Social Media, Immediacy and the Time for Democracy. Strong bonds are born on the ground, through discussions and confrontations.
Hence the importance of these moments when the meeting and the activity have nothing to do with the slightest profitability.
Basically, doing nothing is “refusing to believe that the present time and space, and then the people who are with us, are not enough”.
It’s about settling down to move forward better, together.
Happy vacation, if you are entitled to this luxury.
And, ideally, a good revolution.
1. Home translation, as with all the passages cited, since the book was read in its original English version.
A first version of this text mentioned that the book had not been translated into French. This is not the case. The translation exists under the title: “For an idle resistance, Do nothing in the 21ste century”. Our apologies.