Alexandra Dantzer

Awake in the World: Insomnia and the Arts of Living in Belgrade

My book manuscript explores how the elusiveness of sleep shapes people’s daily time management. I draw on over 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork with self-described insomniacs in Belgrade, whom I refer to as “non-normative sleepers.” Through interviews, focus groups, sleep diaries, sound mapping, and decoding of sleep and time-management app data, I trace how they struggle with (a)synchrony in a city where foreign capital and authoritarian rule restructure the rhythms of life. Through rest, stillness, and wakefulness, they navigate “new” rhythms and challenge the medical and capitalist logics that define a “good night’s sleep” and a healthy life. I demonstrate that insomnia, in this light, is not simply a disorder, but rather, a quiet rebellion and an insurgent mode of being against regimes of productivity and biomedical control. I argue that being out of sync is a symptom of a specific form of body-mind colonization, which I explore at the intersection of urban and technological environments, therapeutic and labor institutions, and everyday routines.