Forms of Attention

Society, Culture, and Person: A Systems View of Creativity

“…Kermode (1985) tells how Botticelli was for centuries considered to be a coarse painter, and the women he painted "sickly" and "clumsy". Only in the mid-nineteenth century did some critics begin to reevaluate his work and see in it creative anticipations of modern sensibility.…”

'An Arabian in My Room': Shakespeare and the Canon

“…But he does admit that the system is not based on the controlling power of any kind of centralised authority, that it is much more dispersed, spontaneous and fragmented than this would imply: 'The work of preservation and defense is carried on by many voices co-operating, however unwillingly, to one end, and not by a central authority resisting its challengers'. 11 Kermode of course does not go into much detail about those 'many voices', or to whom they belong. One suspects that they are the voices he hears around him in the SCR, and reads in the TLS.…”

“…For that you need academic approval, intellectual commentary which may well be local, provisional and impermanent, but which plays a role in securing the 'permanent value', the 'perpetual modernity' of the canonical work. 9 Such commentary is not necessarily valuable in itself, but it confers value on the work: it is the 'medium in which its object survives'. 10 This 'continuity of attention and interpretation' has the effect of keeping a work current, accessible, perpetually intelligible.…”

“…9 Such commentary is not necessarily valuable in itself, but it confers value on the work: it is the 'medium in which its object survives'. 10 This 'continuity of attention and interpretation' has the effect of keeping a work current, accessible, perpetually intelligible. It is apparent that Kermode credits academic opinionleaders like himself with far too much power in this process.…”

Global Social Theory: Building resources

“…The argument has been that what we learn and who we study should emerge out of the scholarly processes of reading and engaging across texts and long-standing traditions. As Bhambra (2014) has argued, however, such an understanding rarely takes into consideration the fact that canon formation has always been political, indicating particular "forms of attention" (Kermode, 1985) and inattention. While canons have sometimes shifted and adapted in line with changing demographics, forms and conventions, such changes have rarely occurred easily or smoothly.…”