Notes for a Political Philosophy of Dreams

Subjectivity and Freedom of the Oniric Experience

Abstract

This paper is triggered by the reading of Charlotte Beradt’s The Third Reich of Dreams, from which we will postulate two hypothesis. On the one hand, that dreams can operate as a “seismograph” capturing the tectonic movements of an exceptional so-cio-political context; on the other hand, that such dreams can function as a surface that put into play the subject’s possibilities of action to think and exercise freedom in relation to the practices of subjectivity production. To this end, we will propose an analytic of power in terms of a diagram that unfolds point by point, albeit unevenly, in a network of relations. From this perspective, we will consider dreams as hypomnemata, i.e. true narratives that contribute to the subjectivity production for thinking and exercising free-dom. We will review how this proposal works both in the Beradtian archive and in the Lazarian dreams (prison, concentrationary and post-concentrationary dreams) recovered by Jean Cayrol in his archive. We will see that this interpretative approach will allow us to think dreams in political terms, even in the most oppressive contexts, as well as in the current pandemic situation.