ESPF Colloquium with Cressida Heyes (University of Alberta)

Title: “Mechanized Petrification Embellished with a Sort of Convulsive Self-Importance”: Sleep-Negativity and the Work Ethic

Abstract: Drawing on a wonderful phrase from Max Weber’s essay “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” this presentation argues that the “conservative” work ethic is imbricated with an ideology of sleep. Decoding the representation of elite entrepreneurs’ work and sleep, it shows how both “sleep-negative” and “sleep-positive” discourses instrumentalize sleep while erasing the conditions that shape actual sleep inequities. To make this case, it reads both the visual and textual languages of a range of cultural products and articulates a third, critical-reflexive position that understands how class, race, age, and gender come together in cultivating a sleep-hostile work ethic.