Description
Book Synopsis24/7: 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.
Trade ReviewThe 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 DisintegrationCrary'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 HorizonCrary updates Leninist understandings of the expansion of capitalism in his phenomenal book
24/7, which is well worth a read for a clear understanding of the role of time in the continued and deepening exploitation of the working class under digital capitalism. -- Garrett Pierman * Marx & Philosophy Review of Books *
