Life at the Edge

Abstract

This paper considers the temporal experience constituted by prohibitions against sleep that target individuals who are unhoused and sleep outside. More specifically, drawing on Cressida Heyes’s account of sleep and anaesthetic time in Anaesthetics of Existence, this paper develops a preliminary account of punctuated time as a form of time poverty that is acute for those who must sleep outside. It is argued that such prohibitions against sleep work to anchor an individual in a totalizing presence, thereby instituting a temporal annihilation of subjectivity. Accordingly, this paper suggests that the particular experience of punctuated time endured by individuals who are unhoused can be understood as a violent interruption of subjectivity that pushes them to the edge of lived time.

Keywords

• temporality
• time poverty
• homelessness
• sleep