Carolin Duttlinger is Professor of German Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford and Fellow in German at Wadham College. Since 2009, she has been Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre. She has published widely on German literature, thought, and culture from the eighteenth century to the present and has also spoken about these topics on radio and television both nationally and internationally. She is also the editor of the book series on Visual Culture, published by Legenda.

Duttlinger's central claim that attention is itself inattentive, unpredictable, uncontrollable, that it is inseparable from distraction, guides her incisive readings, which emphasize the inconsistencies of attention's theorization and practical application. In this way, the book also adopts the dialectical thinking of Benjamin and Adorno. The result is a magnificent historical study, that will no doubt become a touchstone of future scholarship.

• Preface Introduction 1: Virtue, Reflex, Pathology: Attention from the Enlightenment to the Late Nineteenth Century 2: Modernity: Fragmentation and Resistance 3: Franz Kafka: Diversion, Vigilance, Paranoia 4: Psychotechnics: Training the Mind 5: Threshold States: Robert Musil 6: The Art of Concentration: Self-Help Literature 7: Stillness: Weimar Portrait Photography 8: Presence of Mind: Walter Benjamin 9: Musical Listening between Immersion and Detachment 10: Spellbound: Theodor W. Adorno on Music and Style 11: Celan, Sebald, Hoppe: Networks of Attention Bibliography

Carolin Duttlinger is Professor of German Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford and Fellow in German at Wadham College. Since 2009, she has been Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre. She has published widely on German literature, thought, and culture from the eighteenth century to the present and has also spoken about these topics on radio and television both nationally and internationally. She is also the editor of the book series on Visual Culture, published by Legenda.

Duttlinger's central claim that attention is itself inattentive, unpredictable, uncontrollable, that it is inseparable from distraction, guides her incisive readings, which emphasize the inconsistencies of attention's theorization and practical application. In this way, the book also adopts the dialectical thinking of Benjamin and Adorno. The result is a magnificent historical study, that will no doubt become a touchstone of future scholarship.

• Preface Introduction 1: Virtue, Reflex, Pathology: Attention from the Enlightenment to the Late Nineteenth Century 2: Modernity: Fragmentation and Resistance 3: Franz Kafka: Diversion, Vigilance, Paranoia 4: Psychotechnics: Training the Mind 5: Threshold States: Robert Musil 6: The Art of Concentration: Self-Help Literature 7: Stillness: Weimar Portrait Photography 8: Presence of Mind: Walter Benjamin 9: Musical Listening between Immersion and Detachment 10: Spellbound: Theodor W. Adorno on Music and Style 11: Celan, Sebald, Hoppe: Networks of Attention Bibliography