Habit, attention, governance

In this chapter, the author takes the relations between habit and attention as his point of entry into a broader set of questions concerning how we should write habit’s political histories and the lessons that we should derive from such histories regarding habit’s role in governing practices. The role of habit in the governance of conduct is thus inseparable from its role in this broader set of relations, requiring its redefinition as ‘an engineering issue’ involving ‘the establishment of arts of education and social guidance’. The author focuses on the work of Sara Ahmed in developing an 'archival perspective' as a means of engaging with the complex sets of such relations in which habit’s varied political uses are inscribed. If habit thus forms a part of the mental states that have to be eliminated if voluntary attention is to be produced, it also plays a positive role in the processes through which such attention is produced and sustained.