http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/498804059

A draw back of thought On the concept of distraction in Kafka, Heidegger, and Benjamin

This dissertation examines and seeks to revitalize the concept of "distraction," through an analysis of the changes it underwent in German-speaking philosophy, critical theory, and literature between the World Wars. Defying the sociological and psychological norms of the period, Franz Kafka, Martin Heidegger, and Walter Benjamin refused to treat distraction as a deficiency in attention. It did not afflict an individual subject but named the point at which subject ontology collapsed, in a revolutionary ontological, historical, and ultimately political movement. The first section of the thesis examines this radicalized distraction in light of two historical trends that converge in modernity. Beginning with Augustine's conception of human experience as dissipation, one trend reaches a highpoint, and a reversal of value, in Jean de La Bruyere's 17th century moral portrait, "le distrait." The introduction to the thesis describes the positive powers that La Bruyere gives "the distracted one." A second trend derives from fifth century Greek theories of mind. A review of this material shows a strong worry about distraction arising in Aristotle's theory of "nous" and Parmenides' ontology---where it is then repressed for the sake of knowledge, being, and history conceived of as fate. Kafka, Heidegger, and Benjamin become interested in it for precisely the reason that Aristotle rejects it. The withdrawal of thought that occurs in "Zerstreuung" offers an unprecedented opportunity to leave foundationalism behind. Responding to Brentano and Husserl, they try to go beyond phenomenology's insistence on a fixed transcendental reference point (psyche, consciousness, time) by means of this concept. Kafka finds in Zerstreuung an antidote to the eschatological framework governing the dreams of industrial society. Heidegger believes briefly in 1928 that Zerstreuung will solve the problem of the unity of being and time. Benjamin sees in Zerstreuung a possibility to free historical experience from the fetters of transcendental knowledge. For two of these writer-thinkers, Kafka and Benjamin, the withdrawal of thought that makes way for a different order is triggered by art and literature. At its center, the dissertation examines the close relationship between literary writing, cinema, and distraction.

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