A Strange Indifference: The Metaphysics and Politics of Boredom

Abstract

This monograph examines the genealogy of our modern conception of boredom, and attempts to critique its role in the modern educational institution. We begin with examining acedia and the moral connotations boredom inherited from the concept. We then turn to melancholia and explore the ways in which experiences of boredom began to be medicalized through a detailed taxonomy of causes. Next, we consider more recent ancestors of boredom - langweilig and ennui. In the case of the former, we discover the preoccupation with mechanical time and its role in our modern experiences of boredom. We also find a more secularized version of the moral disapproval first sighted in acedia. In the case of eunni, we see that modern boredom inherits a second sense, one of moral approbation, in the form of the dandy. Finally, we turn to Heidegger’s treatment of boredom to examine how both sides of this moralizing coin are synthesized into a single equivocal space at the heart of our modern conception of boredom.After completing this genealogy in the first two chapters, we return to Kantian language in order to develop our own positive definition of boredom, one that is rooted in the experiences of the will in the face of impotency. We then explore the ways that Foucault’s language of disciplinary technologies can help us characterize the deployment of the concept of boredom in the context of modern educational institutions, including the ways in which this deployment reveals racial and gender inequities within the institutions. In the fourth chapter, we consider three alternative pedagogical styles that can help undermine or alleviate the conditions that make possible experiences of boredom in the hope of resolving these pernicious, inequitable deployments of the concept.