Selflessness and self-absorption

Art historian Michael Fried’s 1980 book Absorption and Theatricality is about how French painters in the late 18th century started to paint people who are totally absorbed in the moment — engrossed in what they are doing and oblivious to the possibility that they could be observed (by, say, the person looking at the painting). Fried tries to figure out why viewers of the time had such a taste for this. What made the experience of looking at someone who appeared oblivious to their presence so compelling? And was it any different from simple voyeurism? What, if anything, did it have to do with, say, the spread of literacy and of private solitary reading as a familiar and pleasurable experience?

Since we are currently acclimating ourselves to a new culture-sweeping technology for self-absorbed pleasure, these struck me as interesting questions. As Nathan Jurgenson has argued, social media make our awareness of the possibility of self-documentation a central feature of consciousness, which makes absorption of the kind Chardin specialized in depicting difficult for us to experience. We are removed from the present moment and always potentially spectators of ourselves, wondering how what we are doing might play in the the future in some other medium. We may become nostalgic for the possibility of true absorption in experience, or even in a book.

This heightened self-consciousness and constant awareness of the demands strategic self-presentation robs us of our sense of personal authenticity. Social media can makes us all too aware of how calculating we might seem to others and presents us with the unsolvable problem of how to convey our truly genuine interest in something without it coming across as a convenient or tactical pose. The space in which we can experience ourselves just being ourselves disappears.

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OH MY GOD THIS APPLICATION OF MICHAEL FRIED RE: SOCIAL MEDIA

IT COULD BE SO USEFUL RE: HIS MORE RECENT WRITING ON PHOTOGRAPHY

When I get excited on the internet lately, it mainly seems to be excitement to read and think about books I haven’t read yet (often books I have already bought!) even though I am not reading those books precisely because I am on the internet.