Routledge Critical Perspectives on Breath and Breathing – serie

This book studies the phenomenological ontology of breathing. It investigates breathing and air as a question of phenomenological philosophy and looks at phenomenological questions concerning respiratory methodology, ontological experience of respiration, respiratory spirituality and respiratory embodiment. Drawing on the ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Luce Irigaray and David Kleinberg-Levin, the book argues for the ontological primacy of breathing and develops a new principle of philosophy that the author calls “Silence of Breath, Abyss/Yawn of Air”. It asserts that breathing is not a thing- or person-oriented relation but perpetual communication with the immense elemental atmosphere of open and free air. This new phenomenological method of breathing offers readers a chance to begin to wonder, rethink, re-experience and reimagine all questions of life in an innovative and creative way as aerial and respiratory questions of life.Part of the Routledge Critical Perspectives on Breath and Breathing series, the book breaks new ground in phenomenology and phenomenological ontology by offering a decisive and insightful treatment of breath. It will be indispensable for students and researchers of philosophy, phenomenology and ontology. It will also be of special interest to Merleau-Ponty scholars as it investigates uncharted dimensions of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy.

This book studies the phenomenological ontology of breathing. It investigates breathing and air as a question of phenomenological philosophy and looks at phenomenological questions concerning respiratory methodology, ontological experience of respiration, respiratory spirituality and respiratory embodiment. Drawing on the ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Luce Irigaray and David Kleinberg-Levin, the book argues for the ontological primacy of breathing and develops a new principle of philosophy that the author calls “Silence of Breath, Abyss/Yawn of Air”. It asserts that breathing is not a thing- or person-oriented relation but perpetual communication with the immense elemental atmosphere of open and free air. This new phenomenological method of breathing offers readers a chance to begin to wonder, rethink, re-experience and reimagine all questions of life in an innovative and creative way as aerial and respiratory questions of life.Part of the Routledge Critical Perspectives on Breath and Breathing series, the book breaks new ground in phenomenology and phenomenological ontology by offering a decisive and insightful treatment of breath. It will be indispensable for students and researchers of philosophy, phenomenology and ontology. It will also be of special interest to Merleau-Ponty scholars as it investigates uncharted dimensions of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy.

The Unlively: Protesting Fossil Fuel Pollution with David Buckel examines air pollution and extinction by looking into how they might contribute, conceptually and politically, to a queer ecopolitics of death. It focuses on the figure of David Buckel, an American LGBT rights lawyer and environmentalist, who self-immolated to protest fossil fuel pollution in 2018. The author considers Buckel’s death as an act of political protest, whereby a (singular) living body attacks itself as a response to the (collective) extinction of non/human life forms. The book mobilizes the materiality of death and non/human extinction, proposing the concept of the “unlively” as that which negates life or is incapable of vitality, to account for Buckel’s self-immolation as well as the deadly effects of fossil fuel air pollution.Part of the Routledge Critical Perspectives on Breath and Breathing series, the book will be indispensable for students and researchers of political ecology, environmental humanities, gender studies, and queer theory, alongside the emerging fields of queer death studies, discard studies, and critical breath studies.

Day by day, the global climate crisis intensifies, yet there are little changes in the behavior of privileged societies. This book reveals that such paradoxical behavior is due to the prevalence of a narrative that considers planet Earth as a self-sustaining system, driven by a circular respiration pattern from one actor to the next. It argues that transforming this prevailing planetary breathing pattern is necessary to change humans’ destructive behavior towards the morethan- human environment. The volume, in particular, references the feminine Matrixial Theory of psychoanalyst and philosopher Bracha L. Ettinger. In linking the Matrixial Theory to environmental issues for the first time, it explores the rhythms and scopes of a Matrixial breath and what alternative forms of relationship between humans and nature might emerge from it. It lays the foundation for an urgently needed subversion of thought and action toward novel ethics of breathing-with beyond homeostatic reductionism.The first of its kind, this volume will be indispensable for students and researchers of environmental ethics, feminist thought, climate studies, social change, or critical theory. It will also be useful to cultural scientists, artists, philosophers, ecologists, theologians, architects, therapists, social workers, educators, and politicians.

This book studies the multiple ways of breathing (in) and knowing (of) contemporary lifeworlds. It offers a collection of ethnographic and interdisciplinary essays articulating the politics and poetics of air, atmosphere, and the body across diverse geographical locations, historical moments, and theoretical approaches. The book argues that air, atmosphere, and the body are relational entities shaping and shaped by the very act of breathing. It shows how differences in air, atmosphere, and the body at the scales of neighborhoods, regions, nation-states, and the planet co-constitute breathing inequalities and respiratory conditions of possibilities in suffocating times.As part of the Routledge Critical Perspectives on Breath and Breathing series, Ways of Breathing and Knowing will be an indispensable critical pedagogical companion for students and researchers of anthropology, gender studies, political sciences, science and technology studies, psychology, environmental studies, human geography, and philosophy. It will also be of interest to activists, artists, curators, and cultural and environmental institutions.