Breathe and let breathe: Breathing as a political model of organizing

Abstract

Take a deep breath. Although nothing is more natural or essential to human bodies than breathing, this simple yet vital act is the critical result of complex organizational, material, and political processes. We suggest that breathing can be thought of as a political model of organizing insofar as it shapes questions of life and death while rooting these “operationally” in immediate, urgent, collective and more-than-human intra-action. Breathing is also a social act because the self is bound up with others in a fabric of relations upon which each person depends, and so breathing can serve as a trope for regenerating and rethinking social structures, institutions and organizing blueprints. We take the act of breathing—its literal and metaphorical (im)possibility and collective organization—as the focus of a reflection on relations among humans and between other living beings, humans, and their ecological surroundings. Re-thinking the question of whose breathing we care about and whose breathing counts, we offer a political model that embraces the mutuality principle for post-humanistic and post-anthropocentric organizing and community building. We thereby hope to “inspire” and materialize new social and political realities for organizing our shared future, conceptualized as building a (scholarly) community of breathers who breathe and let breathe.