“The Persistent Monster.” Coronavirus Nightmares and Capitalist Crisis in New York City
Sergio Palencia Frener
Anthropology of Consciousness March 1, 2026 DOI: 10.1111/anoc.70021 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Qualitative study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | College students in an introductory anthropology course in New York City during the March–May 2020 COVID-19 lockdown |
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Key findings | Argues that the COVID-19 pandemic magnified experiences of fear, isolation, and loneliness in everyday life under capitalism, as reflected in students' nightmares depicting phantasmagoric spaces, globalized dream narratives, bad omens, media oneiric compositions, and neighborhood monsters. Contends that while these dreams show increasing capitalist and media penetration, they also contain anti-capitalist images, a subterranean "specter" that potentially questions "capitalist realism". |
Abstract
ABSTRACT In March–May 2020, New York City's college students suffered sudden lockdown due to the COVID‐19 pandemic and a mandatory transition from in‐person classes to virtual meetings. Unexpectedly, my introductory course to anthropology transformed into a collective space to share experiences of the city in times of crisis. This article examines in‐class conversations on nightmares and the variety of contemporary hauntological experiences in the context of a global pandemic. Through students' conversations and written reports, personal journal entries, and photos, this article discusses COVID‐19‐related nightmares that depict phantasmagoric spaces, globalized dream narratives, bad omens, media oneiric compositions, and struggles against neighborhood monsters. I argue that the COVID‐19 pandemic magnified experiences of fear, isolation, and loneliness in everyday life under capitalism. The article presents oneiric phenomena characterized by a global exchange of COVID‐19‐related dreams and nightmares. Smartphones allowed international students to exchange dream interpretations with their kinship networks in other continents. While nightmares show the increasing penetration of capitalist relationships and media in students' dreams, this article contends that dream narratives contain anti‐capitalist images as well, a subterranean “specter” that potentially questions “capitalist realism”.
Comparable studies
Other qualitative studies on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Other as a Nightmare: The Israeli-Arab Encounter as Reflected in Children's Dreams in Israel and the West Bank Jewish and Arab fifth to seventh graders living in various settings in Israel and the... | 1989 | Qualitative content analysis | n = 212 |
| Nonwaking Responses to Waking Stressors: Dreams and Nightmares1 Men from the cohort eligible for military duty during the Vietnam Conflict, varying in... | 1990 | Survey interview study | n = 442 |
| Communing with the Gods: The Dreaming Brain in Cross-cultural Perspective | 2011 | Phenomenological study | |
| Partial memory reinstatement while (lucid) dreaming to change the dream environment. Lucid dreamers | 2020 | Qualitative study | |
| Strange themes in pandemic dreams: Insomnia was associated with more negative, anxious and death‐related dreams during the COVID‐19 pandemic Global survey participants | 2022 | Longitudinal mixed-methods study | n = 2,240 |