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.