Protopolitics of Breathing

A protopolitical point of view consists in considering what constitutes the stuff of mobilization: how does a gesture circulate between individuals so that it ends up carrying away collectives? Breathing, an automatic act essential for survival, can also be inflected and used as a rallying gesture across human/non-human boundaries. By examining different convergences of struggle around the figure of breathing (anti-racist struggles, climate struggles, trans/crip struggles), the article proposes to examine the somactivist potentials of air.