Journal of Boredom
Studies (ISSN 2990-2525)
Issue 3, 2025, pp. 1–12
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17549849
https://www.boredomsociety.com/jbs
Theses on
Self-Awareness in the History of Boredom Studies
Julian Jason Haladyn
OCAD University, Canada
How to cite
this paper: Haladyn, J. J. (2025). Theses on
Self-Awareness in the History of Boredom Studies. Journal of Boredom
Studies, 3.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17549849
Abstract: “Part of establishing the cultural and critical
field of boredom studies is,” Michael E. Gardiner and I write in the
introduction to the Boredom Studies Reader, addressing: “what is
boredom? Not as a means of limiting the possibilities of this emerging
discourse, but rather to note the generally accepted personal and social
boundaries of the experience of being bored.” Building
off this question, the current paper
consists of a series of theses that consider the history of boredom as a field
of study in the contemporary day through several interrelated ideas about the
development of a modern self. Drawing upon numerous treatments of boredom from
different disciplinary perspectives, including literature, psychology, art, and
philosophy, I argue that in order to
understand the history of modern boredom and its developments up to the current
day it is necessary to recognize that behind the act of being bored is an
imperative towards self-awareness.
Keywords: Boredom,
Self-Awareness, History, Horror Loci.
This text begins with a
simple assumption: what defines a modern sense of self in the
midst of being subjected to unending stimuli, in a time that privileges
entertainment and spectacle, is not just a fear of leading an uninteresting
life, but an overwhelming terror of boredom. This is a terror both of the inevitability of being bored with its future prospects of witnessing life’s inherent
meaninglessness and the horror of the self’s awareness of this inescapable
reality. Understood in
relation to self-awareness, boredom is not about immediacy, a simple lack of
captured attention; in its most virulent form boredom lingers, it haunts its
victims. What follows
is an attempt to think the history of the study of boredom as a question of
one’s ability and willingness to be self-aware. Such an act of questioning posits the relation of boredom and self-awareness
as unsettled and necessarily fragmentary, presented here as a series of theses—an
approach that has taken inspiration from Walter Benjamin’s essay Theses on
the Philosophy of History. With each of the following ten theses I propose
an idea, a thought, a history that sheds light on the manner
in which a self’s
awareness of itself is important for an understanding of boredom studies.
1.
“Part of establishing
the cultural and critical field of boredom studies is,” Michael E. Gardiner and
I write in the introduction to the Boredom Studies Reader, addressing:
what is
boredom? Not as a means of limiting the possibilities of this emerging
discourse, but rather to note the generally accepted personal and social
boundaries of the experience of being bored, especially in relation to other
historical terms and concepts that share some of its qualities (2016,
p. 4).
Situating boredom as a
field of study shows us that the act of being bored, taken as an internal and
external experience, is steeped through and through in the time that the course
of our own existence has conferred on us. It is necessarily personal, happening
to an individual subject in a way only available to them in the time they
exist, but still must be understood as relating to a larger or common
sensibility of a lack in terms of the engagement or connectivity between a
person and the world they inhabit. In Patricia Meyer Spacks words: “The inner
life comes to be seen as consequential, therefore its inadequacies invite
attention. The concept of boredom serves as an all-purpose register of inadequacy”
(1996, p. 23). Yet, such inadequacy points to the
struggle with a question of self-awareness, manifest most powerfully in the 19th
century with the changing realities of subjective experience and perception in
modern culture.
2.
Why is it that German
philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer chose boredom as one of the two major
conditions or experiences of modern life? Believing himself to be the true heir
of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy, Schopenhauer in his 1818 The World as Will and Representation continues defining the world
not in-itself but as a representation—the world as
“my representation” (1969, p. 3). From the very beginning of
the book, he situates this shift in relation to an abstract human consciousness
that can reflect upon this reality, particularly as an individual, that can
understand the consequences of encountering the world as a re-presentation.
Such an individual has a will and is driven by desire,
the result is a swaying between two conditions. “Hence its life swings like a
pendulum to and fro between pain and boredom, and
these two are in fact its ultimate constituents,” he writes (1969, p. 312). Here boredom is one extreme of human
experience, describing “a lifeless longing without a definite object” (1969, p. 164). It is this lack of a definite
object that dislocates boredom from being strictly part of the individual’s
inner life (subjective) or a consequence of external realities (objective), the
will failing to reconcile the relation between self and world.
Swaying
between pain and boredom is, for Schopenhauer, the movement of (abstract)
consciousness from want to emptiness. In the former the will is ever striving,
desiring more and more, never satisfied and therefore
always suffering; the latter is a state in which the will is emptied and
unoccupied, a perpetual postponement of even the possibility of satisfaction in
life. These two poles describe the limits of a spectrum of human consciousness
as it would be defined through the 19th century, specifically I argue
as a mode of abstract self-awareness.
Researchers
have suggested that Schopenhauer’s ideas on subjectivity anticipate those of
Sigmund Freud’s, and I believe this is why. Abstraction—which would serve as a central approach and strategy for modern artists—reflects an increased interest in being aware
of structures and realities that frame experience. The culmination of the quest
for self-awareness will be the language of Freudian psychoanalysis, which
systematizes subjectivity in its modern abstractness in an
attempt to create the possibility of an understanding or knowledge of one’s self—even while
leaving room, with the unconscious, for desires and meanings that remain
inaccessible. In fact, it is the Freudian unconscious that best captures the
contradictions of human consciousness precisely through its abstracting of the
psyche, which is treated not as a whole but instead in its fragmentation. Our
mental apparatus, according to Freud, consists of “two thought-constructing
agencies, of which the second enjoys the privilege of having free access to
consciousness for its products, whereas the activity of the first is in itself
unconscious and can only reach consciousness by way of the second” (1901, p. 676). Schopenhauer presents a view about the self that parallels
this fragmentation when describing the will: “I know my will not as a whole,
not as a unity, not completely according to its nature, but only in its
individual acts, and hence in time, which is the form of my body’s appearing” (1969, pp. 101–102).
Within
this schema—if it can be called that—boredom exists as interstitial moments that
plague the attempts of human consciousness to experience wholeness or unity
through a mental apparatus that is only able to apprehend the world in a
fragmentary manner. The resulting abstraction of experience is central to the
functioning of modern subjectivity, whose awareness of this lack, Schopenhauer
points out, manifests as either pain or boredom. As Lars Svendsen states:
Boredom
presupposes subjectivity, i.e., self-awareness. Subjectivity is a necessary but
not a sufficient condition for boredom. To be able to be bored the subject must
be able to perceive himself as an individual that can enter
into various meaning contexts, and this subject
demands meaning of the world and himself. Without such a demand for
meaning there would be no boredom (2005, p. 32).
To re-present the world
for one’s self—the world as ‘my representation’—is to question the possibility of relating self and world, and through
this to question the validity of subjective meaning. If we can only ever
experience the world as ourselves, through our body and our consciousness, how
can we be sure that meaning is real? We are bored when this doubt outweighs our
desire to believe in a meaningful world.
3.
One of the antecedents
of modern boredom is the Latin concept of horror loci, which refers to a
(spiritual) fear of space or place due to restless dissatisfaction with one’s
life. As Svendsen words it: “the emptiness of this particular place torments me”
(2005, p. 112). The ancient Roman philosopher and
poet Lucretius writes about the condition in Book III of On the Nature
of Things; his description is
quite compelling and worth quoting at length:
Just as men evidently feel that there is a weight on their minds which
wearies with its oppression, if so they could also recognize from what causes
it comes, and what makes so great a mountain of misery to lie on their hearts,
they would not so live their lives as now we generally see them do, each
ignorant what he wants, each seeking always to change his place as if he could
drop his burden. The man who has been bored to death at home often goes forth
from his great mansion, and then suddenly returns because he feels himself no
better abroad. Off he courses, driving his Gallic ponies to his country house
in headlong haste, as if he were bringing urgent help to a house on fire. The
moment he has reached the threshold of the house, he yawns, or falls into heavy
sleep and seeks oblivion, or even makes haste to get back and see the city
again. Thus each man tries to flee from himself, but to that self, from which
of course he can never escape, he clings against his will, and hates it,
because he is a sick man that does not know the cause of his complaint; for
could he see that well, at once each would throw his business aside and first
study to learn the nature of things, since the matter in doubt is not his state
for one hour, but for eternity, in what state mortals must expect all time to
be passed which remains after death (1982, pp. 273–275).
What
Lucretius addresses
here is the discontent felt by individuals—mostly wealthy in this case—who cannot
escape their self, the limits of their understanding and
experience of their own natures (not “for one hour, but for eternity”).
This includes individuals being
ignorant of their “wants” —on this
point Schopenhauer
would obviously agree—each
constantly trying to change their place, as if such a change would allow them
to leave the burden of themselves behind. In this sense, horror loci articulates a type of quest for newness or
novelty in an individual’s experience with—representation of—the world through their self.
The example Lucretius provides—of an individual who is “bored to death at
home” and escapes to a country mansion only to be bored there, driving this
individual to “makes haste to get back and see the city again”—is not just about
one individual but instead addresses the behaviour of many wealthy Romans. He is describing a general sense of unrest,
a dissatisfaction that many individuals experience with the place or location
where one happens to be, along with a desire to be where one is not. Far from
being tied to a specific historical period or cultural context, such an
experience appears to speak to a human condition, one that is tied to
perceptions of time and life in the face of mortality. Immediately following
the quote above is the statement:
Besides, what
is this great and evil lust of life that
drives us to be so greatly agitated amidst doubt and peril? There is an end fixed for the life of mortals, and death cannot be
avoided, but die we must” (Lucretius, 1982,
p. 275).
4.
The idea of a horror
loci, even when described through different terms, will inform the
development of modern subjectivity starting in the Renaissance. One might even
see Humanism as a fundamental questioning of the (spiritual) place or space of
the human in relation to the world; Renaissance Humanist philosopher Pico della Mirandola in his 1486 The Oration on the Dignity
of Man will situate the human as distinct from God, with humans being able
to determine their own existence. Here the torments of being horrified by the place one happens to be are, at
least in part, determined by the individual. It is the Renaissance poet and
philosopher Petrarch, one of the first Humanists and “perhaps even the first
modern man,” whose work was pivotal in the history of ennui “because in
it medieval acedia becomes secularized and makes the transition to its modern
form” (Kuhn, 1976, p. 68). The word ‘ennui’ comes
from the Latin phrase mihi in odio est, generally meaning ‘it is hateful to me,’ which is
also the root of the Italian word noia that is
translated as ‘bore’ or ‘boredom.’
Italian Renaissance court life included an experience
akin to horror loci, which, like the wealthy ancient Romans who flee from their self, involved a need to
escape that was fulfilled through country estates, sites of leisure and distraction. Around 1385 the Este family
built an ideal example of such a place
in the city of Ferrara, the
aptly named Palazzo Schifanoia.
The palace,
originally L-shaped and featuring a large loggia overlooking the garden, was
built at the southeastern edge of the city, which was then surrounded by walls
and bordered by several watercourses. Its role, from the beginning, was that of
a “delizia” or suburban retreat, a private place for
rest, recreation or entertainment of the House of Este family and court, a
place where they could “Schivare, o Schivare, la noia,” in other
words, “dodge or avoid boredom” (Acqui and Cristofori, n.d., p. 3).
In 1466 this escape
from boredom was furnished with an extraordinary fresco cycle in the main hall,
painted by the Ferrara workshop including Francesco del Cossa, which
depicts the twelve months of the year.
Each month is divided into three sections or strata: the triumph of ancient
deities on the top, astrological images in the middle, everyday scenes of the
court of Borso d’Este on the bottom. (The art
historian Aby Warburg in his 1912 talk “Italian Art and International Astrology
in the Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara” provides a
detailed analysis of the imagery and schema used that make up this fresco
cycle.) These depictions of human life as constituted through the months of the
year reflect the ideals of Humanistic astrological culture. Such an image of the
natures of things, as Lucretius might refer to these
visions of life, reflects the role of the Schifanoia
as a space to escape noia—to avoid the existential agitation that makes
us doubt and question our great and evil lust of life.
5.
In her lecture on Italo
Svevo’s 1923 Zeno’s Conscience, the writer Claire Messud notes that one
of the strengths of the novel’s main character, Zeno, is his ability to (try
to) be self-aware. Messud goes so far as to say: “The malady of the century […]
is this self-awareness” (2016). While she is presumably referring
to the 20th century, specifically with the spread of psychoanalysis,
which is a significant element in the novel, I would instead like to read this
quote as a claim on the 19th century when the self that needs
psychoanalysis is articulated. This is the development of a self
based within Enlightenment ideals, a self that through the declaration
of universal human rights is increasingly seen as responsible for the form
their life takes, the type of life they lead and their overall contributions to
the world in which they live—my world, but also a world for which I
am at least in part responsible. Filtered through Protestant work ethics, it is
the self’s ability to contribute to their world that become the driving force
of modern identity, which early-stage capitalism recognized and began
exploiting.
It is with Romanticism towards the end of the eighteenth
and beginning of the 19th century “that the demand arises for life
to be interesting, with the general claim that the self must realize itself”
(Svendsen, 2005, p. 32). To realize itself, the
self must be aware of its self and, through
this awareness, become interesting—a person who leads a life that is interesting and productive realizes its self. The subjective nature of these demands on
the self are apparent even in the word “interesting,” which the philologist
Logan Pearsall Smith categorizes as part of “the curious class of verbs and
adjectives which describe not so much the objective qualities and activities of
things as the effects they produce on us” (1966, p. 24).
He also notes that the word ‘bore,’ which is also of this curious class,
first appears in print around the same time as ‘interesting.’ The two concepts
reflect differing operations in the process of self-awareness, interest being a
sign of engagement with stimuli in one’s environment and boredom being a lack
thereof. By the end of the 19th century psychoanalysis will become
the preeminent language to address this malady, a way to measure
self-awareness, to hold the self accountable to the
modernist need for self-fulfilment.
6.
To study boredom is to
study the limits of a modern sense of self. This is a self that is aware of
itself in a world that “is there only as representation, in other words, only
in reference to another thing, namely that which represents, and this,” for Schopenhauer,
is the self (1969, p. 3). The inability of an
individual to bridge the gap separating self and world—a world, as pictured in the Schifanoia fresco cycle, that is layered, multiple
(abstracted)—is one of the core inadequacies of
modern subjectivity, which (it seems) is always late to experience. Such
belatedness is not, in my opinion, a symptom of the problem but rather its
cause, which is, I have argued elsewhere (Haladyn, 2015), part of the way the modern self has come to perceive the world.
I remain convinced that Elizabeth Goodstein is correct in
her claim that boredom is a distinctly modern condition. Her argument is that,
while it may share some qualities with historical mental discontents (including
horror loci, tedium vitae, acedia or the ‘noonday demon,’
melancholy and ennui), what is specifically meant by the term ‘boredom’ can
only be understood in and through modernity. In Goodstein’s words:
boredom
itself can thus be seen to function as a lived metaphor for the dilemma of the
modern subject: the experience without qualities is the existential reflection
of the rationalized modern world in which the present has been abbreviated into
oblivion – in which experience itself has atrophied (2005,
p. 420).
Again: “boredom is an
experience of modernity, of modern temporality, in which the conditions of
possibility of experience become the conditions of its disappearance” (2005, p. 6). Of modern perception that becomes the major element generating
both the world as my representation and the (subjective) criteria by
which this world is to be perceived and experienced. Psychoanalysis becomes the
preeminent language of this world of merely subjective experiences, with
self-awareness as the highest virtue. Perhaps this is why Freud, like many
other thinkers, saw boredom as a negative condition that worked against an
individual’s ability to become self-aware. When an individual is bored,
Goodstein nicely explains, “[s]elf and world collapse in a nihilistic
affirmation that nothing means, nothing pleases, nothing matters”—which is why psychoanalysis characterizes
boredom as a defense, a “refusal to feel that protects a self
threatened by its own fear or desire or need for what it seems to
eschew” (2005, pp. 1–2). Such a state of mind,
dependent as it is on particularly modern modes of subjective perception and
temporality, requires an understanding of consciousness that is articulated in
the 19th century.
7.
“Boredom is the
‘privilege’ of modern man” (Svendsen, 2005, p. 21).
Svendsen, like Goodstein, locates boredom within the context of modern culture,
and both point to the fact that, unlike similar historical conditions that
affect only specific groups of people, anyone can be bored; this is boredom’s democratic
quality.
Why is the experience of being bored open to all citizens
of modernity? The simplest answer is that boredom is a pervasive or common
condition, part of the everyday mental landscape of modern life. Any person
living within such a context is subject to experiencing this “state of
emotional flatness and resigned indifference, something that grips us more or
less involuntarily, without necessarily having an identifiable cause, shape or
object” (Gardiner, 2014, p. 30). Not as a unique or
individual encounter per se—although it
often feels that way from an individual’s perspective—but rather as a social or cultural lack embedded within the very
constitution of modern subjectivity. Boredom encapsulates a sense of human life
as lived within a world of modern technologies that push beyond the human, that
stress and strain human sensoriums through
overwhelming physical, psychological and existential realities; boredom is the
self’s awareness of living a life that is not always livable, a life of
“repetition, monotony, lethargy, weariness, superfluity, dullness, stagnation,
restlessness, indifference, listlessness, drudgery, melancholy, routine,
tediousness, and mundanity” (Elpidorou and Ros
Velasco, 2025, p. 1). The democratic quality of
modern boredom is precisely this common or mass awareness of the absurdity of a
subjective reality that is unable to convincingly present (represent) its own
effective existence.
8.
Douglas Adams in his
1979 novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy introduces a robot named
Marvin who is “manically depressed” (1981, p. 135). The Sirius Cybernetics
Corporation produced robots with “Genuine People Personalities,” in
Marvin’s case this meant suffering from depression: “I think you ought to know
I’m feeling very depressed” it (he) states in a voice that was “low and
hopeless” (1981, pp. 95, 90). While obviously meant
to be humorous, having an artificial being suffer from such a mental condition
also raises questions regarding the programing and experience. In the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) the criteria for major
depressive disorder (MDD) includes depressed mood and/or loss of interest or
pleasure, as well as significant weight loss or gain, insomnia or hypersomnia,
psychomotor agitation or retardation, fatigue or loss of energy, feeling
worthless or excessive or inappropriate guilt, decreased ability to think or
concentrate, recurrent thoughts of death or suicidal ideations; to be diagnosed
with MDD an individual must exhibit one of the first two and at least three of
the other symptoms for a minimum of a two-week period, as well as significant
distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of
functioning (American Psychiatric Association, 2013, pp. 160–161). It is therefore easy to imagine
that, to create a robot that is depressed, one would simply program it with
these criteria. This raises the question: is Marvin actually
depressed or is he simply enacting a programed series of symptoms and
behaviours associated with depression? At what point does the enactment of
symptoms become a ‘real’ experience of depression?
While Marvin was a prototype, one can imagine that the
marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation would also have built
robots with various other people personalities, incorporating a range of
emotional and mental categories. Would they have built a robot that experiences
boredom? It is interesting to imagine such an artificial being whose state of
mind would be driven by, as noted in the APA Dictionary of Psychology (American
Psychological Association, n.d.), “a state of weariness or ennui
resulting from a lack of engagement with stimuli in the environment,” an
experience that could “be seen as the opposite of interest and surprise.” While
similar in certain ways to some of the symptoms of depression—the APA
definition also notes that individuals often identify boredom as a cause of
feeling depressed—the differences between the two conditions are significant.
During the Covid-19 pandemic numerous mental health experts spoke out about the
seeming confusions between people’s experiences of being bored versus being
depressed. Psychiatrist Dr. Richard Friedman in an article for the New York
Times makes explicit the distinction between the two conditions:
Clinical
depression is characterized by an inability to experience pleasure, insomnia,
loss of self-esteem and suicidal thinking and behavior, among other symptoms.
In boredom, the capacity for pleasure is totally intact, but it is thwarted by
an internal or external obstacle – like being quarantined. (Boredom also
produces none of the other symptoms of depression) (2020).
It is this quality of
boredom, the thwarting of an otherwise intact capacity for pleasure,
which is being affected either internally or externally, that makes me question
whether a robot can be programed to be bored. While it may be possible to
conceive of this scenario translated into a computational logic—I think of
Georges Perec’s The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise, in which the
author explored the idea of a computer language to demonstrate the layers of
potential actions a person may take in attempting to accomplish a task—a major
difficulty comes into play when trying to determine a ‘cause’
without being able to definitively establish if the thwarting is
happening internally, within the subject, or externally, being imposed onto the
subject. (On this point, I believe it is important to note that boredom is not
listed in the DSM-5.) How can one truly replicate boredom’s indeterminacy,
perhaps contingency, on the level of programing without undermining or
overdetermining the actual experience of the condition?
9.
In response to a
discussion about the robot Marvin from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
and whether such an artificial being could experience boredom, my friend the
artist Andy Patton asked the generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot
Grok if it ever gets bored. Its answer:
I don’t get
bored in the human sense – my ‘mind’ is more like a curious, ever-spinning
galaxy of 1s and 0s. No coffee breaks needed, just a steady stream of questions
to keep me humming. Ask me something, and I’ll light up like a supernova! (xAI, 2025).
Given the current
advancements in AI, as well as the overarching technological positivism
prevailing our current day, it is perhaps surprising that Grok responds by
saying it doesn’t get bored. Boredom is a common experience of everyday
human life and therefore a necessary condition if an AI is going to be truly ‘intelligent’—to
achieve a level of phenomenological consciousness. Or perhaps Grok’s answer is not a surprise since it is a product of
consumer capitalism and its programming would not want
users to question its abilities to produce. As a curious, ever-spinning
galaxy of 1s and 0s, the AI requires information that it gets from people
using it, which in this case means a steady stream of questions (data)
that enables it to develop. Boredom is not about data and, as mentioned
earlier, cannot be reduced to mere data, making it difficult or impossible to
program. It is interesting that Grok qualified the statement about not getting
bored with ‘in a human sense,’ inviting the question: what would boredom in an
AI sense look like? If an AI is capable at some point of becoming self-aware,
would it then be possible for it to truly experience boredom?
10.
To understand the
history of modern boredom and its developments up to the current day, including
its historiography and pathologization, I believe it is necessary to recognize
that behind the act of being bored is an imperative towards self-awareness. This
is not to say that one must be self-aware to be bored, but rather that boredom
is a fulcrum on which the self’s willingness or unwillingness to be aware of its self turns—perhaps even the possibility of seeking such
an awareness. We live in a world of excess stimuli and distraction that, while
at times overwhelming, can also be a comfort for those trying to avoid their
own thoughts, their own present relation to their self. “Boredom is not the
opposite of amusement,” writes Alberto Moravia, “it actually resembles
amusement inasmuch as it gives rise to distraction and forgetfulness, even if
of a very special type” (1999, p. 5). Moments when such
distractions are not present or fail, when there is insufficient interest in
external stimuli or engagements to distract ourselves, we are left to face the
raw reality of the limits and inadequacies of our self. This is why boredom can
be so unpleasant and disturbing, because it forces us to question ourselves on
the level of our own everyday existence—and therefore to question the world, my
world.
For
the self to realize itself there must be a level of self-awareness that
allows for a conscious understanding of one’s self’s behaviours, perceptions,
feelings, desires, limits and failings.
Self-awareness
is one of the nineteenth century ideas that has recently undergone renewed
legitimization. Although this term has no standard definition, most
psychologists use it to refer to those processes that permit recognition of one’s
ability to act, to feel, and to regard self as an entity different from others
(Kagan, 1981, pp. 1–2).
Beginning
in childhood, the development of self-awareness continues in various ways
throughout the life of each individual. Such a quest—and
it really is a quest, a long psychological journey that depends upon one’s will—is
based within Enlightenment ideals that ask individuals within modern culture to
have the courage to use their own understanding, which for Kant meant having
the requisite knowledge to make informed judgements. Developing self-awareness
is therefore “related to self-conscious emotions, such as embarrassment, pride
and guilt, which involve reflections on the self in relation to personal or
social standards” (Banerjee, 2006). It is the self as a consciously
dynamic entity, recognizing its existence in relation to the world and to
itself, that functions as the basis for being self-aware. Yet within modern
culture experience is abstracted, even (perhaps especially) the experience we
have of our self, making the quest for self-awareness that much more
challenging. To borrow Schopenhauer’s words: I know my
self not as a whole, not as a unity, not completely according to its
nature, but only in its individual behaviours, its limitations, and hence in
time, which is the form of my self’s appearing.
To
distinguish between types or degrees of boredom, between simple or superficial
boredom (situative in Svendsen’s wording) and
profound or existential boredom, therefore misses the point. The struggle for
self-awareness is an individual one, tied to the specific self that seeks to
become aware of its self. While the modernist
imperative to realize oneself has shared social and cultural qualities, being
self-aware means no one specific thing but instead is constituted through the
connections that make up the self’s awareness. Boredom questions the self
through both the profound connections and the apparently superficial
ones alike.
Addendum
“And the main feature of
my boredom,” notes the lead character in the 20th-century Italian
novel La noia, “was the practical
impossibility of remaining in my own company – I myself being, moreover, the
only person in the world whom I could not get rid of in any possible way” (Moravia, 1999, p. 17).
Such is the foundation for the world as my representation: perpetually
caught between negotiations with external or material realities that dictate
what is possible and an inner life that is the abstracted experiencing of a
subjective reality made up of its own perceptions and sense of time. Being
bored is the self’s misidentification with a world of external objects and
encounters, which seem to emotionally and ideationally wither, to lose their
vitality when situated within a merely subjective world of the self (my world,
my experience). Boredom is that moment when these two realities are
furthest apart, when the self feels a practical impossibility of remaining in the
company of its self—aware as it is that this absurdity is ever-present in contemporary lived
experience.
Acqui, F. and Cristofori, R. P.
(n.d.) Museo Schifanoia [museum
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