24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep - Tapa blanda

"[A] dark, brilliant book" - Michael Hardt, Artforum "A polemic as finely concentrated as a line of pure cocaine" - Los Angeles Review of Books "A fascinating short book." - New York Times Magazine "The 24/7 phantasmagoria of digital exchange impresses the commodity deep into the body's tissues, leaving only sleep as a partial respite. Jonathan Crary updates Marcuse's One Dimensional Man with a vigilant critique of the totality of the seemingly eternal present of this pseudo-world." - McKenzie Wark, author of The Spectacle of Disintegration "Crary's polemic against the demands of 24/7 capitalism brilliantly illuminates the devastating effects of our changed temporality. Enjoined to constant productivity, we consume ourselves, our world, and our capacity collectively to imagine a common future. This is a crucial commentary on the format and tempo of contemporary life." - Jodi Dean, author of The Communist Horizon "A humane & bracingly splenetic counterblast." - Steven Poole, New Statesman "24/7 is the capstone of Crary's archeology of the spectacle and arguably the most significant of the lot. It's informed by the erudition of one of the most thorough and original researchers on the planet. The vast bodies of knowledge Crary seamlessly weaves together in 24/7 is reminiscent of the work of Michel Foucault - [and] marked by a moral passion that fuels Crary's polemic and underscores what's at stake, specifically the future of the human being in both the physical and emotional sense. Plus, it's eminently readable." - PopMatters "[An] intelligent and intriguing discussion of how modern monopoly capitalism insinuates itself into the most intimate aspects of our lives - 24/7 is a masterful exploration of the place of the human individual, their dreams and the future of the species in today's age of nonstop neoliberal capitalism and its multitude of manifestations." - CounterPunch "Crary makes a smart argument - astute and far-seeing" - Erwin Montgomery and Christine Baumgarthuber, The New Inquiry "Sleep, for Crary, is a part of the everyday that has yet to be fully integrated, where we are vulnerable but also capable of moving into other forms of time. As such, sleep is a resource not only for physiological renewal, but one that provides, the book proposes, an exemplary space for rethinking the basis of the relationship of politics, the imagination and the processes of living." - Matthew Fuller, Mute "In his latest book the examined period is Crary's own, and if his previous works have been interesting and instructive, then 24/7 is if anything rather poignant. In a way that shouldn't be possible he manages to take up the distance of an historian toward his age, and lay bare the myths of the western self-image of the early 21st century." - Jan Holmberg, Dagens Nyheter "Crary's talent as a pamphleteer is unequaled..." Corriere della Sera

24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep explores some of the ruinous consequences of the expanding non-stop processes of twenty-first-century capitalism. The marketplace now operates through every hour of the clock, pushing us into constant activity and eroding forms of community and political expression, damaging the fabric of everyday life. Jonathan Crary examines how this interminable non-time blurs any separation between an intensified, ubiquitous consumerism and emerging strategies of control and surveillance. He describes the ongoing management of individual attentiveness and the impairment of perception within the compulsory routines of contemporary technological culture. At the same time, he shows that human sleep, as a restorative withdrawal that is intrinsically incompatible with 24/7 capitalism, points to other more formidable and collective refusals of world-destroying patterns of growth and accumulation.