Rex Exsomnis: Sleep and Subjectivity in Capitalist Modernity
<p><strong>Symptom of the Present.</strong> Today, biology and the medical sciences are highly advanced in determining the physiology and neurology of sleep, and the emerging medicalization of sleep disorders has be- come a new site of “biocapital” accumulation. At the same time, our “twenty-four-hour society,” with its incessant production, communication, and consumption activities, makes sleep a problematic, uncertain element of everyday life, even perceived as a waste of time or as inertia in a mobile and pragmatic neoliberal social order obsessed by the idea of full employment of finite human existence.The anxiety around sleep (evidenced in the booming scientific research in this area, proliferating self-help books, and debates on various techniques for sleeping well) is a symptom of our present. Sleep also functions as a metaphor for political somnolence, from which people are “awakening” in the current economic turmoil, staging protests and civil disobedience…</p>
Authors: Alexei Penzin
Series Editor: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Chus Martínez, Bettina Funcke
Editors: Katrin Sauerländer, Cordelia Marten
Copy Editor: Claire Barliant
Proofreader: Stefanie Drobnik, Sam Frank
Translators: Astrid Wege
Designer: Leftloft, Daniela Weirich
Part of: dOCUMENTA (13): 100 Notes, 100 Thoughts
ISBN: 9783775731263