Epilogue: the ethico-politics of attention

Abstract

ABSTRACT This epilogue moves from an autoethnographic reflection about interior design magazines to an interrogation of the workings of predatory capitalism in contemporary times of crisis. The text asks why in the context of ongoing global crises (including pandemics, environmental disaster, and extreme poverty) ‘our attention still fails to focus except very episodically, on the suffering of distant others’. Through mobilizing the aesthetic subject, and drawing on fictional works, the text argues that in order to ‘acknowledge those who are most vulnerable’ it is necessary to ‘come to intimate terms with global crises’, emphasizing the importance of the interventions in this special issue, as the subject of crisis needs first to question the very epistemology of being in crisis.