To Stir the Sleep of the World: Conjectures on Awakening

Abstract

To Stir the Sleep of the World:Conjectures on Awakening Peter Sloterdijk Translated by Robert Hughes (bio) Present-day religious experience has again become universal ("catholic") and abyssal. It manifests itself in all experience as the absence of a ground. —Vilém Flusser, "Der Boden unter den Füßen und der Himmel über uns" Sleep: basically, your most enduring disappointment. —Henri Michaux, Tent Posts Once again the morning gives its assurance that I will exist. A light breeze passes through the semidarkness. In the room, sounds of activity report the signs of something making its appearance. This being—or whatever else we want to call whatever is stirring there—behaves little differently from parents who no longer bother to be quiet when the time has come for their children to get up. The sounds become intrusive, not to say inconsiderately so. The world will be as it will; the only certainty is that the world begins its work before me. The flies of light settle on my eyelids, they will not cease their work of torment until my eyes have forsaken their resistance to the day. I am steeped in the idea of where this scene is tending. Too often have I gone through what's about to happen at such times to misunderstand the outcome. I know what they're up to—there's no doubt about it: they want to bring me back to me. I have long since understood that, at night, the darkly dressed monitors go up and down between the sleeping tubs and, toward morning, or when they just think time enough has passed, they pull the plugs. As the sleep water drains, the body slowly comes back and feels as though it were a vague tendency that will soon do this and that—action, we will call it, when we are once again standing on our feet. I would be remiss if I didn't want to draw conclusions from the body's return. One does not linger long in a drained tub: once the body is back, as a point of reference and [End Page 301] as a function, then I cannot be far behind. When I arrive, the first thought, the first gesture is not long in coming. Pre-forms of personality emerge from the warm-bath darkness. No one has to tell me that the goal of the exercise is to achieve verticality; this morning, too, something inside me is ready to abide by the fate of the species that made us risky beings, standing on two legs, hands free—and with the head placed at the highest, most favorable point for a cool survey of the field. No one will be able to say that I did not comply with the call for human dignity this morning. The improbable is now unfolding; the upright walk is now an event; my standing on no more than two legs is now an accomplished fact; henceforth, it will be an easy matter for me to cover in miniature scale the path of human destiny ascending to the level of consciousness. There must be a ringtone to hear—once, twice—by the third time I would answer. The caller might ask for a person of my name, and I would be able—I assure you—to bring forth the words "that is I," without any pathos and produced in the tone of a steady inhabitant of the world, one who knows no weak moment. "You have reached the party you are looking for. What can I do for you?" I could say, as if to dispel any notion that I had been away from the world for a few moments. I would make it understood to this early caller that this post of creation is one I occupy unwaveringly—even at an hour when other, hollow, absent-minded beings would not yet be able to assert their identity with themselves. But even if there is no ringtone to induce my premature upsurge of self-assertion, there can be no going back and, crossing the room like a pro, I proceed to take up my first tasks of the day. Of course, self-consciousness takes...