Scan barcode
menacebibliotheque's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.75
cherrypie99's review against another edition
5.0
i loved loved loved this. so short, quick to read, and salient. ties so many of my fav topics and theorists together!
julioviana's review against another edition
5.0
um dos melhores livros que li nos últimos anos. ainda vou precisar reler muitas e muitas vezes. mas tudo bem!
huerca_armada's review against another edition
4.0
I must confess, sleeping has long been a problem for me stretching back years, at least as far as middle school. The reasons are multifaceted -- when I was younger, the driving force was the same as most other adolescents, namely an unfettered access to video games and caffeinated soda. As I got older, it evolved into a pattern of late-night activity brought forward by packed schedules with friends, schoolwork, and a part-time dishwashing job that all vied for attention. And even later than that, it evolved into a pattern of restlessness and insomnia that cut deeply into the time I had partitioned for rest and which I would lay awake during, feeling time tick slowly by. It is a nagging sense that, even as tired as I was, that I was missing something. A sense of satisfaction that eluded me.
Enter Jonathan Crary's 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, a book which I picked up during a sale Verso was holding this past May Day. Despite a short length, there's a lot to chew on with 24/7, which explores the nature of productivity under modernity, and what it means for us as human beings enmeshed in vast systems that have taken on lives of their own. Some of the materials that Crary explored I was already familiar with, such as the usage of night-time raids and tactics by the US Army as a means by which to disrupt the social sleeping patterns of (rightfully) hostile populations in Afghanistan and Iraq. But, throughout most of the book, Crary continued to surprise with the interwoven views of other philosophers who had explored the ruptures that modernity had brought to everyday life.
In short, the realm of sleep and the diurnal rhythms of human life are anathema to capitalism in the 21st century. With every facet of waking life already colonized by commodification, rarified to it's apex at every turn, what is sleep but the final frontier, a border which yearns (to capitalism) to be forded in order to create a new realm of consumption? A full third of human existence lies open to be exploited; and as Crary points out, why shouldn't it? The conceptualization of sleep as anything but wasted time is a tradition that dates back to the Enlightenment, if not even slightly earlier than that. With a such a long history of intellectual rationalization, what is sleep but an enemy to modernity and those technophiles amongst us?
There's a lot more that I could write about this excellent analysis by Crary, as I've not even touched the way in which our daily habits of relaxation and focus have changed over the decades just within the 20th century, but I'll have to leave it here for now. If you are familiar with Debord, Deleuze, Sartre, and many of the others here, you may find this an easy, breezy read, able to be finished in a day or two, but for those newcomers like myself, I would advise taking some notes. All in all, something I can see myself returning to in a few months with some more study and reflection of what is written here.
Enter Jonathan Crary's 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, a book which I picked up during a sale Verso was holding this past May Day. Despite a short length, there's a lot to chew on with 24/7, which explores the nature of productivity under modernity, and what it means for us as human beings enmeshed in vast systems that have taken on lives of their own. Some of the materials that Crary explored I was already familiar with, such as the usage of night-time raids and tactics by the US Army as a means by which to disrupt the social sleeping patterns of (rightfully) hostile populations in Afghanistan and Iraq. But, throughout most of the book, Crary continued to surprise with the interwoven views of other philosophers who had explored the ruptures that modernity had brought to everyday life.
In short, the realm of sleep and the diurnal rhythms of human life are anathema to capitalism in the 21st century. With every facet of waking life already colonized by commodification, rarified to it's apex at every turn, what is sleep but the final frontier, a border which yearns (to capitalism) to be forded in order to create a new realm of consumption? A full third of human existence lies open to be exploited; and as Crary points out, why shouldn't it? The conceptualization of sleep as anything but wasted time is a tradition that dates back to the Enlightenment, if not even slightly earlier than that. With a such a long history of intellectual rationalization, what is sleep but an enemy to modernity and those technophiles amongst us?
There's a lot more that I could write about this excellent analysis by Crary, as I've not even touched the way in which our daily habits of relaxation and focus have changed over the decades just within the 20th century, but I'll have to leave it here for now. If you are familiar with Debord, Deleuze, Sartre, and many of the others here, you may find this an easy, breezy read, able to be finished in a day or two, but for those newcomers like myself, I would advise taking some notes. All in all, something I can see myself returning to in a few months with some more study and reflection of what is written here.