Sleep. |
The phenomenon, the process and the mystery "sleep" form an intersection of diverse disciplines and discourses of the eighteenth century. At first glance sleep serves as an enlightening metaphor, as an image for a lack of consciousness and knowledge.
Apart from this metaphor a substantial theoretical discourse on sleep was developing in philosophical, anthropological, and aesthetic approaches of the enlightenment.
Its manifestations are the objects of analysis in this project which proposes to trace out the history of sleep – distinct from a history of dream – first in the history of philosophy and then in the history of discourses.
1. Between the baroque period and the enlightenment sleep becomes an important philosophical argument in support of a theory of passive and, in a broader sense, corporal faculties. The discussion of the passive constitution of sensuality emerges from here.
In the contextual details surrounding sleep one encounters, for instance, discussions of the irritation and indistinguishabilities of body and mind or the development of an aesthetic of pure vision building upon phenomena of imagery in the moments between slumber and waking.
2. From the mid-eighteenth century onward sleep begins to challenge the earlier anthropology and rational psychology of faculties. It becomes a problem which can be described in terms of the circulatory system. On the basis of this new model numerous unprecedented behavioural patterns are formulated which create an equilibrium of sleep and waking – be it individually or collectively – define a pathology of sleep, and redefine the traditionally precarious proximity of sleep and death. Sleep thus becomes a part of new notions of death during the eighteenth century. Likewise it comes to play an important role in questions of mental and physical regeneration and in theories of stimulus protection.