When Thinking Stops : Philosophy and Sleep in Capitalist Modernity

Contemporary theorists, including Walter Benjamin, Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Nancy, have identified that an essential feature of capitalism is an uninterrupted or permanently wakeful continuity of production, exchange, consumption, communication and control.A form of enforced insomnia which keeps people subservient and compliant.This makes sleep a revolutionary act. Insomnia ranges from the history of philosophy to contemporary 'sleep science' and cutting edge theory to provide us with a powerful philosophical and aesthetic intervention – that charts not just the problems of sleep but its revolutionary potential as a new politics of sleep.This is urgent reading for anyone trying to sleep in contemporary capitalism.