Practices and Environments of Collective Sleep in Twenty-First-Century Latin American Film

Abstract

What do practices of sleep—or lack thereof—convey about power, social and class divides, and political structures in Latin American postcolonial societies? How does cinema represent and critique binaries such as conscious/unconscious, utopian/dystopian, individual/social, and private/public that are often associated with settings where sleep-wake cycles take place? In exploring these questions, this article analyzes practices and, more specifically, environments of collective sleep as affective landscapes and narrative tools in contemporary Latin American films. It draws from atmospheric family dramas in neoliberal Argentina and dark sci-fi comedies in post-socialist Cuba to examine embodied and em(bed)ded relations before, during, and after acts of sleeping, dreaming, and awakening.

Résumé

Que révèle le sommeil sur les relations de pouvoir, les divisions de genre et de classe, et les structures politiques dans les sociétés postcoloniales ? Comment le cinéma représente-t-il les binarités corps / esprit, conscient / inconscient, utopique / dystopique, et privé / public associées aux cycles de sommeil / éveil ? Cet article analyse des pratiques et des environnements collectifs du sommeil, du rêve et de l’éveil en tant que paysages affectifs dans des films d’Argentine et de Cuba.