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

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.