THE CULTURAL POLITICS of SLEEP Nicole Christina Eugene a Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Gree
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POTENT SLEEP: THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF SLEEP Nicole Christina Eugene A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS August 2006 Committee: Erin Labbie, Advisor Don McQuarie © 2006 Nicole Eugene All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Erin Labbie, Advisor Why is sleep, a moment that is physiologically full and mentally boundless, thought to be a moment of absence and powerlessness? Where did this devalued notion of sleep come from and how can we situate sleep studies within a continuation of a historical processes and economic infuences? In other words, how does sleep effect and exist within systems of power? To answer these questions I turn to a range of scholarship and theoretical studies to examine the complexities and dynamics at work within the cultural discources on sleep. By creating a genealogy of sleep I am able to track the way notions of sleep have changed and evolved over time. I develope a theoretical framework to examine how the Enlightenment effected notions of sleep by strengthening a cultural disposition for logical, rational and phonomenological modes of knowledge. I find that the advent of modernity is signified by the moment in which sleep, darkness and unkowing become negative while being awake, light and knowledge become positive. To understand how sleep (and sleep studies) operates in contemporary situations I examine them within the economy of time in which clock time is conflated with money. Here I also visit the way sleep functions in relation to work in a neo-Taylorist management era. I offer an account of sleep's connections to passivity in the within patriarchal systems of thought. I determine that the cultural politics of sleep and sleep disorders point to a rift in the Western Self because of a presumed simultaneity of thinking, acting and being. I have engaged in a range of disciplines and use theory, iv historical studies, textual analysis , and autoethnography as methodologies to outline some of the major cultural discussions that surround sleep. v Dedicated to the beloved that will not awaken, Beverly Eugene, and to a young life that has just awoken, my niece. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS When I embarked on a quest to uncover the cultural dynamics at work within my experience as a chronically sleepy person I had no map and I had no clue where to plant my first step. Since then my interest in sleep has been greeted with enthusiasm and encouragement by several of the faculty affiliated with the American Cultural Studies program. I want to thank Kathleen Dixon, Scott Martin, Kim Coates for the affirmation I gained while working with them. I want to also thank Rekha Mirchandani for her support throughout the initial phases of the project. Don McQuarie deserves to be acknowledged because he made everything possible, and he continues to be the backbone of a fantastic program. I am eternally grateful to Erin Labbie for being my advisor, my mentor, my confident, and most importantly for being a young Jewish female intellectual. Through knowing and working with her I am better prepared for the trials of being a young Black female intellectual. Thank you for believing in my ideas and my competence. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION. AN EXPLORATION OF THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF SLEEP STUDIES …................................................................................. 1 Research Question ……………………………………...…………………………. 3 Methodology …... ................................................................................................. 4 Literature Review…... ........................................................................................... 5 A Note on the Absence of Sleep Studies in the Social Sciences and the Humanities...................................................................... 10 Professional Discourses on Sleep …...................................................................... 12 Overview…... ................................................................................................... .... 14 CHAPTER I. A GENEOLOGY OF SLEEP AND SLEEP STUDIES............................... 17 From Light to Darkness: The Awakening of Reason ............................................. 28 From Darkness to Illumination .............................................................................. 44 Bathing in the Light............................................................................................... 52 CHAPTER II. SLEEPING IN THE ECONOMY OF TIME............................................. 65 Saturated Time...................................................................................................... 66 Rhetorical Authority of Sleep Medicine................................................................. 80 The Economy of Time........................................................................................... 83 Toward a Marxist Analysis of Sleep Discourses ................................................... 97 Sleep as Work............................................................................................ 99 Sleep as Commodity .................................................................................. 105 The Napper............................................................................................................ 112 viii CHAPTER III. LIFE THAT IS NEITHER AWAKE NOR ALERT ................................. 119 The Sequence: Awake, Aware, Alert, Active, Alive .............................................. 120 A Feminine Repose: The Passivity of Sleep........................................................... 125 The Other Fetish: Somnophilia ................................................................. 133 Between Awake and Asleep .................................................................................. 135 The Grayness of Narcolepsy: Needing what No One Wants....................... 140 Strategic Passivity...................................................................................... 148 (ANTI)CONCLUSION..................................................................................................... 156 EPILOGUE: THE IMPETUS............................................................................................ 159 REFERENCES......... ....................................................................................................... 164 APPENDIX A SLEEP DISORDERS 101 ......................................................................... 169 ix LIST OF FIGURES/TABLES Figure/Table Page 1 Raphael, The School of Athens............................................................................... 31 2 Fransico Goya, The sleep of reason brings monsters.............................................. 41 3 Salvador Dali, Persistence of Memory ................................................................... 48 4 Polygraph of REM Sleep....................................................................................... 55 5 Drowsy doctors ..................................................................................................... 69 6 “Drowsy Driving Causes Crashes” sign ................................................................ 75 7 Modern Times Poster............................................................................................. 87 8 Bed in Chenonceau Chateau in Touraine, France................................................... 106 9 MetroNap's Pod,.................................................................................................... 115 10 Cataplexy Cartoon................................................................................................. 144 Eugene 1 INTRODUCTION: AN EXPLORATION OF THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF SLEEP STUDIES Although sleep is both a need and a drive it has not been the focus of critical attention within the academy and everyday life. In fact, research suggests that the study of sleep has been largely ignored by significant parts of the academy, including cultural studies. To the extent that sleep has been an object of inquiry at all, studies on sleep have been limited to the psychological analysis of dreams, the scientific elucidation of the mechanisms and functions of sleep, and the public health campaign against excessive daytime sleepiness. Within these discussions sleep becomes an object shaped and addressed by the explicit biases, methods, and expectations of the respective discipline. When the goals and assumptions of these disciplines are challenged, threatened, or transgressed it becomes difficult to constitute sleep as a meaningful aspect of everyday life that operates within systems of power; therefore, sleep itself is often relegated to the unconscious, negative, or silent aspects of other disciplines. This leads to a limited understanding of a fundamental drive and activity that takes up the single largest portion of our everyday lives. In turn, the way that we understand the human subject is limited to the study of rational consciousness, or its precise “negative” the unconsciousness of dreams. Outside of dreams, sleep science, and public health, sleep ceases to be a substantive event or topic worthy of intellectual attention. This project seeks to alter the way that we consider subjectivity in relation to sleep by contributing a much needed investigation of the cultural history and treatment of sleep, and initiating a long-overdue conversation about sleep. Eugene 2 Research Question As a borderland, sleep contains the tensions