Sleep

<p>In his 2014 book <em>24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep</em>, the art critic Jonathan Crary identified capitalism’s ‘problem’ with the unproductiveness of sleep. It is Crary’s understanding that sleep cannot easily be exploited for financial gain; sleep is inherently anti-capitalist. Crary considers that ‘sleep poses the idea of a human need and interval of time that cannot be colonized and harnessed to a massive engine of profitability,’ an idea which goes some way to explain why, as capitalism has expanded, ‘the average North American adult now sleeps approximately six and a half hours a night,’ ‘an erosion from eight hours a generation ago’ and ‘ten hours in the early twentieth century.’</p> <p>For many people, sleep is simply a necessary task, a restorative pause in which to recuperate for the following working day. For others, sleep is a tiresome burden; some people, including some of those writing in this journal, suffer with chronic fatigue whilst many struggle to get to sleep at all. Humans suffer from a variety of sleep disorders, such as insomnia, narcolepsy, sleep apnea, teeth-grinding and sleep-walking; how are we affected by our relationship to sleep? In what ways can we be defined by our complicated relationship to sleep? Our society values night-owls and early-birds while chastising others as slackers and layabouts; how do these labels intersect ideas of class, race and gender?</p> <p>Can sleep be an act of self-care, a chance for disavowal or a moment of defiance? Is the time we spend sleeping as definitively unproductive (in a Late Capitalist society which expects unceasing consumption and production) as Crary suggests or might capitalism evolve to recuperate value from our sleeping hours?…</p>