{"title":"Books by Dominic Pettman","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781509569953","title":"Ghosting – On Disappearance","description":"Abandonment is as old as time, but ghosting is a modern twist on this ancient experience. It translates this age-old phenomenon into our modern world of screens, delete buttons and blocking options. Ghosting is not only an unpleasant experience, or cowardly act, but a symptom of our increasingly spectral – that is, mediated and virtual – relationship to the world. The overabundance of new modes of communication has invited an almost infinite number of contacts and conversations. At the same time, it has also offered an unprecedented opportunity for ignoring messages from others. And just as we invented the car crash when we invented automobiles, we also encouraged ghosting when we created the internet.   Ghosting creates an empty space in our minds: a space faithfully tracing the silhouette of the one who ghosted us. But unlike traditional ghosts, today’s ghosters simply disappear, leaving behind a form of haunting that is closer to mourning: mourning for someone who is not in fact dead. In putting a kind of preemptive mourning into our everyday affairs, ghosting tells us much about the current human relationship – or non-relationship – to a shared sense of mortality, purpose, and spirit.   This book – the first sustained analysis of ghosting – traces the source of this vexed experience to, and through, our current media ecology, technological networks, political landscape, collective psychology, romantic mantras, and deep sense of social neglect.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56301475823989,"sku":"9781509569953","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781509569953_c711592b-bacb-43f5-a316-ee01d675e6f2.jpg?v=1786022409"},{"product_id":"9781509562367","title":"Sad Planets","description":"“Everything is sad,” wrote the Ancient poets. But is this sadness merely a human experience, projected onto the world, or is there a gloom attributable to the world itself? Could the universe be forever weeping the “tears of things”? In this series of meditations, Dominic Pettman and Eugene Thacker explore some of the key “negative affects” – both eternal and emergent – associated with climate change, environmental destruction, and cosmic solitude. In so doing they unearth something so obvious that it has gone largely unnoticed: the question of how we should feel about climate change. Between the information gathered by planetary sensors and the simple act of breathing the air, new unsettling moods are produced for which we currently lack an adequate language. Should we feel grief over the loss of our planet? Or is the strange feeling of witnessing mass extinction an indicator that the planet was never “ours” to begin with? Sad Planets explores this relationship between our all-too-human melancholia and a more impersonal sorrow, nestled in the heart of the cosmic elements.   Spanning a wide range of topics – from the history of cosmology to the “existential threat” of climate change – this book is a reckoning with the limits of human existence and comprehension. As Pettman and Thacker observe, never before have we known so much about the planet and the cosmos, and yet never before have we felt so estranged from that same planet, to say nothing of the stars beyond.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56302223851893,"sku":"9781509562367","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781509562367_abe0442f-cd91-4d5f-ab59-b0579171ff15.jpg?v=1786022234"},{"product_id":"9781915672674","title":"Seeking Attention","description":"\u003cb\u003eA book depicting the intimate complicity between attention and identity. . . “You are what you pay attention to.”\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSeeking Attention\u003c\/i\u003e presents thirty insightful “portraits” of contemporary life—from “The Hypochondriac” to “The Self-Driving Car”—charting a roadmap through today’s media and technology landscape. Through these vivid sketches, Pettman examines how our awareness is shaped and contained by both the lifestyles we choose and those imposed on us, inviting readers to better understand their own behaviors and patterns of attention.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing on philosophy, psychology, and art criticism, Pettman navigates the highs and lows of the “attention economy” and the “industrial distraction complex,” delving into how our consciousness is commodified and exploring ways to adapt and reclaim control over where—and how—we focus. With fresh insights into the vital role attention plays in both personal growth and collective well-being, \u003ci\u003eSeeking Attention\u003c\/i\u003e is an essential read for anyone interested in cultural studies, psychology, or the art of mindfulness.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309458534773,"sku":"9781915672674","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781915672674_75bb718e-25be-42c0-9e65-93232baa9203.jpg?v=1786030904"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-dominic-pettman.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}