Bloomsbury Attention and Drift: Santayana and Cavell in the Present

Brought together, attention and drift help immerse ourselves in our surroundings and make us appreciate the contingent and pulsating relations of living. Attention and Drift suggests that instead of being antonyms, drift and attention are part of the same continuum. Attention is the opposite of being focused or fixated. Similarly, drift is not the antithesis of concentrated action, but the obverse of busyness. Within this zone of juxtaposition between attention and drift, there is also a beautiful and stark tension. There is enticement. And there is waiting. The mode of attentive drift is a poetic insinuation and a complete reorientation of our being, central to all creativity and criticism. The chief protagonists here are two immersed readers of life — George Santayana (1863–1952) and Stanley Cavell (1926–2018), whose works and ways of living highlight an involved bringing together of continuities and contingencies of life, appreciation of multiple dimensions of art and a calm display of involved critical faculties. Both seek to assess the relationships between literature, philosophy, art and religion. In each of these domains the two of them celebrate attentive wandering and distractive engrossment at once. In this book we celebrate their passion, involvement, wit, no-nonsense critical acumen and most of all, their ability to love the serendipities of life and creation.