A key term in the cultural criticism of Walter Benjamin is his notion of "reception in distraction" as an antidote to ideology's domination over the mass society in the modern age. This dissertation attempts to illuminate this idea by offering case studies of three projects that summon into existence a new kind of reader, one capable of a trained apperception we may describe as "distracted."; One objective of the mass society according to a Frankfurt model of culture is the erasure of the subject; reception in distraction serves at once to create a space for the social dream and to re-inscribe the subject at the moment of reception through an insistence on its unruly, embodied presence. "Reception in Distraction" creates a cognitive space for disengagement from ideology, modeling what Michael Denning called the "dream work of the social." Critical theory is thus available to the mass public in the form of the "dream of history" that is solely accessible to a distracted apperception and whose subject is the faint possibility that the crisis of the present may be redeemed and repaired in the future. This project attempts to locate this dream of history in the autobiographical writings of Gertrude Stein, the detective fiction of Kenneth Fearing and the late silent cinema of Charlie Chaplin, each of which illustrates clearly the manner in which "distraction" functions to generate contradiction in the face of ideology's mass cultural form. Stein's experiments with the autobiographical form call for exactly this manner of reception, for which "Alice B. Toklas" becomes a key model. Similarly, Kenneth Fearing's Marxist detective novel The Big Clock and Modern Times , Charlie Chaplin's final silent film, reflect on the possibility of a productive reception-in-distraction that may co-opt the social forms of capitalism into a project of resistance and counter-discourse. "Distraction" is therefore more than merely an attitude of reception: it occasions a cognitive distance from ideology that is a key form of critical theory in the modern period.

Researchers and economists have argued that the economic and social stagnation of African Americans is the result of their lack of self-confidence, initiative, and commitment toward their own advancement. This qualitative study examined whether historical conditioning and personal experiences have created a hypersensitivity in this population to events triggering behaviors that mirror the success fearing personality when seeking social, economic, and political advancement. It used Zuckerman and Allison's fear of success scale to identify the range of success fearing in 30 African American men and women aged 35 years or more; this group was also interviewed regarding their lived experiences when pursuing advancements in the United States workforce. The interview questions were formulated using Cohen's fear of success factors; responses were inductively coded and organized using ATLAS.ti 7 software program. Regardless of their fear of success scale (FOSS) scores, the participants' interview responses revealed that even in the absence of explicit or implicit discrimination, there was an unconscious expectation of racism, and that strong family, religious, and educational influences aided in preserving these expectations. The participants were also found to be hypersensitive to events that triggered behaviors mirroring the characteristics of success fearing personality. The findings of this study can have far-reaching implications for the overall social and psychological betterment of African Americans in organizations, educational institutes, and political/civic action groups. It should be used to begin an alternative conversation of personal and social reconciliation, emotional healing, and pride, which participants asserted was the cornerstone of African American progress in the 1960s.