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'Sleep no more': is sleep the newest casualty of late capitalism?

Article Excerpt
Is something like sleep essential to our sense of being human? What would it mean to go without sleep, or to reduce our sleep needs to a couple of hours each night? What kind of culture would regard this as desirable? These questions arise because scientific research appears to be on the threshold of producing a new range of drugs that significantly reduce our reliance on sleep in order to function.

Of course, the way we sleep and the meanings we attribute to sleep have been historically mutable. Before the invention of the electric light and the normalisation of clock time, humans slept quite differently. In a review of Roger Ekirch's At Day's Close: A History of Nighttime, David Wooton notes how the sleep of our ancestors was divided each night into two separate periods. After the 'first' sleep people woke, read, talked, prayed, made love and so on. Wooton observes that 'everyone knew the difference between first and second sleep, and no-one expected to sleep right through'. By contrast, our own sleep, mediated by artificial rhythms and technological stimulation, all too often requires medicinal or narcotic supplements to get us through the night.

Not only have our rhythms of sleep changed, so have our attitudes towards sleep. Sleep is no longer regarded as a productive activity. It may be biologically necessary, but increasingly sleep is regarded as mere 'down-time'. Going without sleep has acquired a certain machismo-value--CEOs and politicians boast how little sleep...

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