"When none can call our power to account": Translating Sleepwalking in Discursive Practices

• Author / Creator

  Parker, Lindsay R.

• This interdisciplinary dissertation makes an original contribution by examining the sleepwalker in terms of medical, legal, and cultural categories in literature, film, and opera. It addresses medical research and medico-legal contexts in relation to diagnostic power and institutional authority over sleepwalking. Moreover, it argues that the sleepwalker is a productive subject and explores the cultural constructions and discursive practices of sleepwalking in medicine, law, literature, and film. Across the dissertation, critical attention is given to historical case studies, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth in the context of ecocritical readings, and Robert Wiene’s film, Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari, in regard to the current debate on the conflict between somnambulism and hypnotic crime. In the analysis here advanced, the dissertation’s research draws on theories from science and technology studies, the sociology of translation, and actor network theory.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Discursive practice
  • Sleepwalking
  • Somnambulism
  • Actor network theory

• Graduation date

  Spring 2012

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R34G66

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.