“One of These Days I'm Going to Get Organiz-Ized”: Insomnia
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“ONE OF THESE DAYS I’M GOING TO GET ORGANIZ-IZED”: INSOMNIA AS THE ARRHYTHMIC EXPERIENCE OF MODERNITY CRAIG MEADOWS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO October 2019 © Craig Meadows, 2019 Abstract The proliferation of insomnia and related discourses since the 1970s has produced an expanding moral economy of sleep. The discursive field of sleep has been defined by the production of biological assumptions of the nature of sleep in the sleep sciences, their distribution through clinical modes of hygienic and pharmacological intervention into disturbed sleep, and their popularization in media discourses of risk, suffering and management. My research begins by identifying the situation of sleep as a discursive object in the sleep sciences, which I contrast with experiential representations of insomnia in the film Withnail and I (1987). The purpose is to dislodge insomnia pathology and instead to understand it as an arrhythmic modality. What emerges in this discourse, however, is a romanticized notion of the discordant body unable to integrate to the rhythms of capital. I then examine the role of sleeplessness in the production of white masculine suffering in neoliberal capitalism through Taxi Driver (1976) and Fight Club (1999). In contrast to this privileged form of androcentric insomnia, I then turn to biographical accounts of insomnia by Gayle Greene and Patricia Morrisoe, who narrate the effects of sleeplessness and their gendered movements through consumer culture and clinical spaces in their attempts to restore what they understand to be natural sleep. The limitations of this embrace of “natural sleep” as an object of desire is then opened in examining the epistemological foundations of the sleep sciences. The objectification of sleep in the sleep sciences proffered a means of accessing a biological substratum that would define the proper expression of sleep. Rejecting this notion of a discrete substratum, and the attendant notion of sleep debt, I close with a chapter on the way in which the spatio-temporal disciplinary apparatuses of the milieu and the functionalized day served to consolidate sleep rhythms and thus the claims of the sleep sciences. The purpose of the dissertation is to call into question the role of the social sciences in furthering discourses of insomnia as friction between bodies and the bureaucratic-functional ordering of the day. Instead I develop sleep as a biopolitical object of intervention and management, one based on the occlusion of the structuring agencies of sleep. ii Acknowledgements This dissertation was completed over a prolonged period of time and could not have been completed without the ongoing encouragement and support of many individuals. First and foremost, my supervisor Catriona Sandilands has been invaluable for her ongoing support of this project, her patience, and her rigorous theoretical and writing expertise. Her ability to meet, discuss, and socialize at Moka House Café in Victoria helped immensely after I relocated to the West coast. I have also been fortunate to have worked with my committee members Janine Marchessault and Terry Goldie, who were gracious enough to return after I disappeared from view for ten years. A number of other scholars have influenced this work in various forms as course instructors during my years as a graduate student and teaching assistant, including Douglas Young, Paul Antze, and Asher Horowitz. Joan Steigerwald also served in this function, and was a very welcome contributor on the examination committee. Greg Bird’s role as external examiner will go far in moving this work into publishable form. Finally, Ken Anderlini’s intellectual breadth and his commitment to justice inspired me from the moment I arrived at SFU to do my BA. He is sorely missed by all of us who were inspired by his pedagogical passion. I have also had the pleasure of befriending a number of academics during my tenure as a “professional sessional,” whose support and advice has been immeasurable. The list is long, but Michele Byers, Peter Brown, Peter Urmetzer, Barbara Lounder, Jennifer Harris, and Bonar Buffam have all provided welcome intellectual engagement, friendship, and references. Any dissertation that takes this long to complete, and occurs across so many health crises and geography, accumulates a long list of academic friends, accomplices, foils, and union comrades. A partial list includes my York peers: Jon Short, Rade Zinaic, Tyler Shipley, Sophie Afriat, Mike Ma, Bojana Videkanic, Neil Braganza, Don Burke, Sonya Scott, Tod Duncan, Sandra Chu, Kathy Kiloh, Laura Shillington, Ryan Toews, Jonathan Adjemian, Serene Tan, Baolinh Dang, Dhruv Jain, Lesley Thompson, Evren Ozselcuk, and Dale Shin. There are a number of personal friendships that have developed as I passed through post-secondary institutions in Toronto, Halifax, Kelowna, and Vancouver, and who helped keep me focused and supported me through various crises. These include June Scudeler, Michael Young, Beth Wilks, Shannon Dockman, Detta Morrison-phillips, Max Haiven, and Chris Rahim. I am also grateful to a long list of family members who stuck with me through this process. This includes my parents and brothers (Todd, Blair and Lee), without whom I would not have survived all the financial and physical strains of producing this work. I’m also thankful to my cheering section of relatives, nieces, nephews, and in-laws. And lastly to Brooke Chapman for her overall wonderfulness, as well as all the poems, crafts, shells, and rocks. I would be remiss to not also mention some of the key health practitioners who helped keep my body moving, resolved numerous pain and biomechanical issues, and aided in the long struggle for a semblance of normative sleep. This list includes: Becky Cyndroski, Elaine Sauvé, Mike Eddy, James Wheeler, Grace Kim, and Carolyne Abrams. iii Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………….…….ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………….......iii Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………..iv List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………………...vi Introduction: “How’d You Sleep?” ……………………..……………………………………….1 The Origin of the Dissertation……………………………………………………….…...11 Chapter Outline…………………………………………………………………….……..17 Chapter One: “My Heart is Beating Like a Fucked Clock”: The History of Sleep Science and the Problematics of Nature…………………………………………...……………24 Modernity, Progress, Sleep……………………………………………………………….25 Sleep Grifters: Nineteenth Century Sleep in Twenty-First Century Historiography…......29 On the Continuity of Watching…………………………………………………………...32 Withnail and I and Insomnia……………………………………………………………...37 Arrhythmia, Insomnia, and Lefebvre’s Everyday Life…………………………………...40 Arrhythmia as Supplement to Everyday Life…………………………………………….43 Circadian Rhythms, Normed Sleep, and Urban Space……………………………...……47 Dressage: Capital, Nature, and Sleep……………………………………………………..52 Arrhythmia and Pathology………………………………………………………………..55 Chapter Two: The Madness of Insomnia: Androcentric Tropes of Psychic Breakdowns and Social Antipathy………………………………………………..…………….61 The Abuses and Appropriations of Schizophrenia……………………………………….61 Of Disorganization and Pathology…………………………………………………….....66 The Androcentric Logic of Insomnia…………………………………………………….70 Sleepless Men Go Boom…………………………………………………………………75 From the Crisis of Accumulation to the Crisis of Masculinity in Taxi Driver…………...79 The Condition of Possibility: Urban Decay and Insomnia……………………………….86 Neoliberal Insomnia: Fight Club…………………………………………………………91 Whither the Habitus?…………………………………………………………………......97 Insomnia as the Order of Disorder……………………………………………………......99 Capital Gets “Organiz-ized:” Neoliberal Insomnia …………………………………......101 The Return of the Disciplinary Apparatus……………………………………………….107 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….111 Chapter Three: Coming to Terms with Gender and Sleep: Insomnia Memoirs and the Politics of Suffering……………………………………………………………………………113 The Disability Memoir…………………………………………………………………..119 Punk Sleepers…………………………………………………………………………....125 Enjoying One’s Symptom: The Abuses of CBT………………………………………...130 Severing Connections: The rejection of Madness……………………………………….139 A Question of Voice…………………………………………………………………….143 “How Can You Be So Uninterested?”…………………………………………………..144 Disarticulating the Sleeper from the Social……………………………………………..148 iv Defining Insomnia………………………………………………………………………153 Conclusion: Adorno Contra Wolf-Mayer……………………………………………….155 Chapter Four: Of Zeitgebers and Chronotypes: Scientific Method and the Systematization of Sleep………………………………………………………………………158 Sleep as Biology Plus Environment……………………………………………………..163 Understanding Insomnia………………………………………………………………...166 The Biological Model of Sleep………………………………………………………….169 The Architecture of the Biological Clock……………………………………………….171 The Bunker Experiments………………………………………………………………..174 The Reproduction of Time………………………………………………………………176 Circadian Rhythms in Bunker Experiments……………………………………………..179 Zeitgebers, Chronotypes, and Homeostasis: Entrainment and the Will to Sleep………..182 The Origins of Sleep Distortion and Deformation………………………………………189 Urf? Mrk? Evolutionary Theory and the Right to Tell Stupid Stories…………………..194 Sleeping in Modernity: Moral Panics and Drugs………………………………………..197 Conclusion: The Subject of the Sleep Sciences and the Co-Constitution of Sleep……...202 Chapter Five: