Fighting the Frackers | Los Angeles Review of BooksFighting the Frackers<br>D. Graham Burnett discusses the politics of attention in our algorithmic age.<br>By Matthew ClementeAugust 8, 2026<br>Philosophy & Religion

Politics

Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement by Friends of Attention, D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh, and Peter Schmidt. Crown, 2026. 256 pages.Buy on Bookshop.org

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THE WORK OF D. Graham Burnett was first brought to my attention in 2022 by the Los Angeles Review of Books, where a volume he edited with ESTAR(SER), the creative collective to which he belongs, received a charming review. As a philosopher interested in art (and that ever-elusive boundary that separates art from life), I found myself ensnared by his evasive community of artist-scholars who dedicate themselves not merely to attracting attention but also to fixing it.

Curious and wanting to know more, I reached out to Burnett directly, and he was quick to reward my interest by agreeing to meet. We jumped immediately into a discussion about attention, virtue, and … miracles. What I took from that initial conversation was his commitment to the idea that attention is a virtue, to be cultivated through deliberate attentional “practices”—formal activities designed to foster the habits that enable us to give ourselves more generously to art, to one another, and to the world in which we live.

Since then, I’ve read further, and we have had other occasions to talk. Burnett identifies as part of a coalition called the Friends of Attention, a group dedicated to “pushing back against the commodification of human attention”—or what the Friends call “human fracking.” I met with Burnett earlier this year, and we talked about digital media, attention activism, and Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement, the new book he helped make.

MATTHEW CLEMENTE: Let me start with a question about attention and community. We’ve known each other for a few years now, and every time we’re together, I find myself reflecting on your generosity and the graciousness with which you treat your friends. You have a way of inviting others in and making them a part of everything you do. I’ve certainly benefited from this collaborative spirit, and I know I count myself among many who can say the same. How does this ethos of hospitality relate to human attention and the movement you are wanting to see take off and flourish?

D. GRAHAM BURNETT: That’s so kind. Maybe the question can be answered in a roundabout way? We learn from our elders, surely. Cornel West was an important mentor-teacher back in my undergraduate days. He was then just on the cusp of publishing Race Matters [in 1993], and he gave off an incredible sense of comradely dynamism and spiritual largesse. I distinctly remember the way he conveyed that a kind of “movement” was taking shape, and I asked him if there was some way I could be a part of what he was trying to do. He demurred, but in a kindly way. It is funny to think back now. He was always a genuine ironist—a good-hearted ironist, very much in the Socratic mold.

Older now, I do wonder what he was actually thinking as he acted so dramatically “interested” or “puzzled” or “enlightened” by this or that contribution from a student. He was often elsewhere, in the heart of his own reflections. But he gave so much to the act of being present. In a way, this was a component of his charisma—that he felt so generous and engaged, even though there was also a way in which he always seemed far away. When we later became colleagues, I asked him to do a piece with me on Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man. The resulting conversation was published in Dædalus, and I feel it is a working-out of a lot of these questions. It is a little hard for me to read now. But I think it possesses a kind of truth about the limits of parrhesia—maybe even a truth about saying the opposite of what you mean.

Say more.

Oh, I don’t mean to be cryptic. West, as I experienced him in those days, was a person who could really “sing the we”—and I loved that about him. The “we”—the first-person plural—is the performative utterance par excellence. For it to work, you have to say it in a way that makes the other person say it too—or, better yet, say it with you! Or, even better still, you both start singing it, and others join in. The “we” is made of this. Is it “true”? Is it “real”? Does that question even make sense?

It is reasonable to worry …

For sure. But then, pragmatically speaking, the first-person plural is neither “true” nor “false”—it is a thing that is effected, that must be practiced. It happens, and it happens precisely in...