Blue Dreams, Black Sleep
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21665664 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marcelle-Anne Fletcher (York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 46 |
| Pages | 31-44 |
| Publication date | 2023-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | TOPIA Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1206-0143 • E-ISSN: 1916-0194 |
| Publisher | University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.3138/topia-2022-0060 |
| OpenAlex | W4367850044 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
Dionne Brand’s meditative and narrative rule-breaking book, A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging, reveals the ways in which the incredible effortfulness of living, dreaming and sleeping is not only proof of a shared condition of Blackness but also of an antiblack world. Sleep (or a lack thereof) indexes scales of and relations to antiblackness. In this paper, I consider the mirrored boundaries between wakefulness/sleep and life/death, probing their psycho-existential and ontological infrastructures. I argue that these states of being are tethered, however tenuously, to each other and in doing so, clarify the stakes of the ostensibly quotidian and mundane. By analyzing insomnia, slumber, fever dreams and nightmares, the text reveals the literal and metaphorical coordinates that locate the bounds of Black consciousness and freedom. Black sleep becomes a kind of freedom, insofar as it offers reprieve that is only possible when the dreamwork is forgotten or psychically registered as nothing at all
Aesthetics · Black swan theory · Consciousness · Epistemology · Existentialism · Linguistics · Narrative · Nothing · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Homelessness and Social Issues · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |