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Is There a Right to Sleep?
- Theory & Event
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 22, Number 4, October 2019
- pp. 951-983
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
This article probes what lies beyond the enduring rational, conscious, Lockean legal subject by speculatively returning to the disregarded body in sleep. I show how phenomenology and political theology, which converge on a concept of legal vigilance, can demonstrate the inherently collective and political nature of sleep, a kind of "flesh" to which we have little conscious access, but which has the potential to reorient legal rights and political values. I mobilize this concept of vigilance to analyze two recent cases, one from the E.U., the other Indian, which have grappled with a right to sleep, finding in one the kernel of the nascent right I seek.