Fighting Sleep

The War for the Mind and the US Military

Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Political Science, Social Science
Cover of the book Fighting Sleep by Franny Nudelman, Verso Books
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Author: Franny Nudelman ISBN: 9781786637840
Publisher: Verso Books Publication: October 8, 2019
Imprint: Verso Language: English
Author: Franny Nudelman
ISBN: 9781786637840
Publisher: Verso Books
Publication: October 8, 2019
Imprint: Verso
Language: English

How the military used sleep as a weapon—and how soldiers fought back

On April 21, 1971, hundreds of Vietnam veterans fell asleep on the National Mall, wondering whether they would be arrested by daybreak. Veterans had fought the courts for the right to sleep in public while demonstrating against the war. When the Supreme Court denied their petition, they decided to break the law and turned sleep into a form of direct action.

During and after the Second World War, military psychiatrists used sleep therapies to treat an epidemic of “combat fatigue.” Inducing deep and twilight sleep in clinical settings, they studied the effects of war violence on the mind and developed the techniques of brainwashing that would weaponize both memory and sleep. In the Vietnam War era, radical veterans reclaimed the authority to interpret their own traumatic symptoms—nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia—and pioneered new methods of protest.

In Fighting Sleep, Franny Nudelman recounts the struggle over sleep in the postwar world, revealing that sleep was instrumental to the development of military science, professional psychiatry, and antiwar activism. Traversing the fields of military and mainstream psychiatry, popular and institutional film, documentary sound technology, brain warfare, and postwar social movements, she demonstrates that sleep—far from being passive, empty, or null—is a site of contention and a source of political agency.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

How the military used sleep as a weapon—and how soldiers fought back

On April 21, 1971, hundreds of Vietnam veterans fell asleep on the National Mall, wondering whether they would be arrested by daybreak. Veterans had fought the courts for the right to sleep in public while demonstrating against the war. When the Supreme Court denied their petition, they decided to break the law and turned sleep into a form of direct action.

During and after the Second World War, military psychiatrists used sleep therapies to treat an epidemic of “combat fatigue.” Inducing deep and twilight sleep in clinical settings, they studied the effects of war violence on the mind and developed the techniques of brainwashing that would weaponize both memory and sleep. In the Vietnam War era, radical veterans reclaimed the authority to interpret their own traumatic symptoms—nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia—and pioneered new methods of protest.

In Fighting Sleep, Franny Nudelman recounts the struggle over sleep in the postwar world, revealing that sleep was instrumental to the development of military science, professional psychiatry, and antiwar activism. Traversing the fields of military and mainstream psychiatry, popular and institutional film, documentary sound technology, brain warfare, and postwar social movements, she demonstrates that sleep—far from being passive, empty, or null—is a site of contention and a source of political agency.

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