Sleep, stillness, ethical and moral agency, critical re-reading, growth-necessity

Abstract: The contemporary economy is built on the value of mobility, achievement, control and efficiency. It leans on the active subject: the one being wide awake and alert. This ideal of the ‘economic man’ profits the growth-necessitated economic thought of our society. But what has been forgotten is that an economic man “is possible only as a subject which sleeps, which has slept, and which will sleep again” (Harrison 2009, 989). It is a subject which, in the existence of mobility, is also still and dormant; a subject which sleeps one third of its life. Furthermore, a sleeping subject is one that carries along a certain kind of virtue, an ethical and moral agency. By focusing on this inevitable, but mostly forgotten, part of a subject it enables us to explore the ongoing economic debate from a novel perspective.
Keywords: Sleep, stillness, ethical and moral agency, critical re-reading, growth-necessity
Narrative step: Visions and strategies for transformation