Sleep-Based Misfits: Chronotypes and the Use of Science and Technology for Advocating Chronodiversity

• In Event: Creative Misfits - II: Creating Categories: Disability, Agency, and Identity

Abstract

Our industrialized society has long favoured those who rise early, positioning those who sleep late as morally deficient. In recent years, however, a growing movement has emerged to challenge this discourse. Following recent successes of the neurodiversity movement, chronodiversity advocates argue that chronotype—one’s body’s predilection for when sleeping occurs—is a natural variation of humanity, which should be appreciated and accommodated by our society.

“Night owls,” people with sleep disorders, and other chrono-atypicals have long been misfits not only in our society, but also within the disability rights movement. Being a night owl is not usually seen as a disability, and sleep-related disabilities are often neglected in discussing disability.

Using a critical disability studies lens, I present a contrapuntal reading of two news magazine articles. These showcase the opposition between the deficit-model–based discourse that early risers are more virtuous (an article about how more successful people rise early) and the social-model–based discourse that late-risers are marginalized by a society built around assumptions of “normal” sleep/wake patterns (an article on “it’s not you, it’s your chronotype”).

In this process, I explore the role that science and technology play in the advocacy for chronodiversity. For example, advocates have used the burgeoning field of sleep science as an important source of validation, whilst avoiding becoming medicalized subjects. And the rise of internet technologies and globalization, though environmentally and socially costly, have helped normalize activities outside traditional business hours, giving tools for chrono-atypicals to better fit in society.

Author

• Elizabeth Patitsas, McGill University