Essays on Boredom and Modernity

Essays on Boredom and Modernity, 2009

The essay situates the phenomenon of boredom within the analysis of modernity and emphasises the strict interconnectedness of the two terms. Through a genealogical approach, it analyses the etymologies and the history of a number of terms related to modern boredom: acedia, melancholy, ennui, spleen, Langeweile, and finally the English boredom. If these terms are all related, the analysis shows that modern boredom is a recent and different phenomenon, as is demonstrated by the fact that the English term "boredom" dates only from the seventeenth century. Some of the causes of the "invention" of boredom are then briefly singled out in order to situate historically the crisis of the self and of human experience which are at the core of the modern epidemic of boredom. Finally, the essay explores the recent literature on the subject and summarises the contributions included in the collection.

This study aims to contribute readings of arguments pertaining to and conceptualizations of the experience of boredom to discussions of art, philosophy and culture. Relevant histories and readings of philosophical accounts of boredom are considered in order to enable an understanding of boredom as generative of distinctive understandings of space. This is further developed as an account of boredom as problematic in the reception and creation of literary and visual art. Beginning from critical discussions of boredom in recent cultural and critical commentary, in particular discussions of the everyday, this thesis considers the phenomenological analysis of the everyday that is at work in Martin Heidegger's account of boredom and in rewritings of this analysis, as the experience of the impersonal, in texts by Maurice Blanchot and Emmanuel Levinas. Boredom is shown to provoke an ambivalence that can nevertheless unfold, or produce, spaces of thought, art and the everyday through the experience of the impersonal. The limits of these spaces of boredom invite us to certain passages through experiences of ambivalence where thought, art and the everyday are opened up, by means of an imagination of boredom, to new possibilities.

Essays on Boredom and Modernity, 2009

The essay relates Walter Benjamin’s analysis of boredom, especially in convolute “D” of the Arcades Project (“Boredom, Eternal Return”), to his critique of experience and thus to a number of central concepts in his work, like ennui, spleen and melancholy. In the notes for the Arcades Project and the Baudelaire book, boredom can be related to Erlebnis: it is the “malady” that accompanies the disintegration of the traditional forms of experience, which Benjamin called the “atrophy of experience.” However, thanks to its connection to allegory, boredom also plays a fundamental role in Benjamin’s revolutionary project: the melancholy gaze of the allegorist reduces the historical event to ruin, showing its facies hippocratica, its “death mask,” thus exposing the naked truth of the demise of experience. This is the dialectical potential of allegory and thus of spleen.

2021

Even if people may always have been bored, 'boredom' as a phenomenon is not a universal feature of human existence. Rather it is deeply connected to organization as a reaction to the gradual emergence in Western culture of the management and administration of time. As an acquired capacity of those able to tell and endure time in an organized manner, boredom is a perceived loss of meaning inferred by the lived experience of a discrepancy between the involvement with transient means in everyday life and their value in a larger vision of existence. But boredom also signifies a concurrent protest against such a loss, which potentially leads new possibilities with it. In this essay, I explore the connection between boredom and organization, focusing on these two interrelated aspects of the phenomenon: how boredom can be understood as an experience of a loss of meaning, but also how this loss itself can be viewed as an imperative towards meaning that remains the source of new forms of organizing.

Journal for The Theory of Social Behaviour, 2007

By focusing on the unique velocity and over-stimulation of metropolitan life, Georg Simmel pioneered an interpretation of cultural boredom that has had a significant impact on contemporary social theory by viewing it through the modern experience of time-pressure and social acceleration. This paper explores Simmel's account of boredom by showing how—in the frenzy of modern life—it has become increasingly difficult to qualitatively distinguish which choices and commitments actually matter to us. Furthermore, this emotional indifference invariably pushes us towards more excessive and risky behavior, towards, what I call, “extreme aeshesia.” Insofar as novel experiences quickly become routine in the technological age, it appears that only extreme sensations and experiences can break the spell of boredom, allowing us to momentarily feel strongly for something.

Thémata Revista de Filosofía

La escasez de literatura es una de las principales quejas hechas por los investigadores del aburrimiento en todos los campos de estudio. Esta afirmación pasa de un estudio a otro sin ser cuestionada, dificultando así la comprensión del verdadero estado de la cuestión. En respuesta, este trabajo demuestra que, de hecho, no es el caso que haya una escasez de literatura sobre aburrimiento; por el contrario, existe una falta de variedad temática y problemas de accesibilidad lingüística. El artículo también refuta la afirmación de que, hasta principios del 2000, había solo unos pocos estudios en aburrimiento publicados cada año. Los resultados se basan en una amplia base de datos que incluye la población total de estudios sobre el aburrimiento y los clasifica según criterios lingüísticos, temáticos y cronológicos.

American Imago

Cambridge Journal of Education, 2007