“How did you sleep last night?” is a question commonly used as make small talk with coworkers, ask friends and family how they’re doing, or determine why those dark circles appeared under your eyes in the morning.
That question is also the first line in Dr. Paul Huebener’s newest book, Restless in Sleep Country: Imagination and the Cultural Politics of Sleep. Published in May 2024, the book is an analysis of cultural representations of sleep in Canada by the Athabasca University English professor who says a greater understanding of the forces affecting sleep will help us all rest better at night.
According to Statistics Canada, 77 per cent of Canadians between 18 and 64 got the recommended amount of sleep per night in 2020, while 55 per cent of Canadians 65 and older reached the definition of a good night’s sleep.
But Huebener’s research shows studies and surveys on sleep across the country indicate Canadians are concerned about the quality and quantity of their rest. In his book, Huebener poses that looking beyond the stats of sleep to the social norms, values, and poltical power dynamics surrounding rest can lead to what he calls greater critical sleep literacy.
“There’s a general public perception that there’s a public crisis around sleep,” said Huebener. “Not everyone agrees exactly what that crisis is, or what kind of sleep would really be ideal, but there is a sense of almost panic that people are not getting enough sleep.”
“I want people to be able to question the usual proposed solutions to that crisis, which are about listening to podcasts and buying sleep tracking gadgets to instead ask, ‘How can we try to address that apparent sleep crisis collectively at a cultural level?”
Politics, culture, and sleep
Many narratives surround this — real or perceived — sleep crisis, many of which pose poor sleep as an issue to be solved behind closed bedroom doors.
“We are presented with the idea that sleep loss is an individual problem, for which every unique person deserves particular blame. Never mind (we are told) the cultural forces that delimit personal agency; we are supposed to learn about the individual health dangers of sleep loss, and we must personally alter our lives in complex, neurotic ways to avoid them. No wonder sleep is a source of anxiety and stress for so many people,” writes Huebener.
Cue the rise of a consumer sleep industry, with new products and data available every day to hack your sleep for the ultimate nighttime productivity, a concept Heubener and other subject researchers call the “sleep-industrial complex.”
“Sleep products can be genuinely helpful in some cases, but they tend to conceal the ways that sleep deficiency is tied to structural issues and social inequities. A weighted blanket can only do so much when we are kept awake by persistent overwork, deficient social safety nets, and technologies designed to be addicting,” writes Huebener.
Though technology is often posed as a pitfall to modern sleep, placing all the blame on our phones creates a false ideal of sleep in past time periods.
While scholars and experts agree there is no one definition of “perfect sleep,” there is consensus that our version, which has little variation season to season, takes place alone or with one person, in a room dedicated to the activity, is a result of industrialization and is shaped by societal norms surrounding the workday and family life.
Age, gender, financial standing, and other social roles also impact sleep; women and mothers often bear the brunt of unpaid labour and caregiving in the home, expectations that don’t end at night. Lack of sleep and potential health impacts in the case of young mothers can’t be fixed by the latest gadget or advice from a podcast episode.
The Slow Movement, in direct opposition to the obsession with productivity that is hustle culture, is about moving more mindfully throughout the day, but Huebener points out this concept too, comes rife with inequities.
“If tenured professors improve their sleep by taking (Slow Movement authors) Berg and Seeber’s advice to ‘do less,’ their less privileged colleagues and students may be the ones to pay the price with late, stressful nights as they finish the latest draft of the curriculum assessment on their own.”
The Slow Movement meets more resistance in the theories of Tricia Hersey, founder of the Nap Ministry. Hersey’s stance is that societal overwork and exhaustion affect marginalized populations disproportionally, and rest is a form of radical resistance against white supremacy and capitalism.
“That the very people who are oppressed by poverty and racism will likely be among the most severely punished for slowing down and doing less, is a central point of both worry and affirmation for Hersey,” writes Huebener.
And these tenets of political power can also be seen in the sleep of unhoused people in Canada, which can mean increased risks of the litany of health issues associated with lack of sleep, but also safety and legal concerns.
“Sleeping outdoors obviously can be dangerous, especially in a Canadian winter,” said Huebener. “It’s also often an illegal activity to try to sleep in public or to try to make a makeshift home in public, so people find themselves in trouble with the police because they’re trying to sleep in the right place.”
Indigenous ideals of sleep replaced by colonial practices by way of assimilation serves as another example of the interplay between sleep, politics, and inequities. Sturgeon Lake First Nation scholar Willie Ermine points to sleep as an important tie to the spirit, and dreams as important sources of knowledge.
“Indigenous children were taken so that they could not sleep with their own families in their own homes, and were instead forced to sleep in overcrowded conditions,” said Heubener. Despite the advocacy for better conditions by doctors, these conditions led to the spread of tuberculosis through residential school attendees.
Understanding these layers that shape and impact our understanding and practices of sleep, a universal, yet individual experience, can help ease both the collective and personal hang-ups around rest and it’s interplay with race, age, social roles, values, and culture.
“Lying down and closing our eyes is an act that carries surprisingly high stakes, and we must learn to read sleep with thoughtful attention and care,” writes Huebener.
