Breathing materiality: aerial violence at a time of atmospheric politics

The gassing events in Ferguson, Hong Kong, Istanbul and Syria, among countless other places, have made it clear that policing can no longer be simply understood as a bodily disciplining of individuals, but that the target has shifted to the medium of the air. The air has for a long time been the neglected element of politics. Modern politics historically arises as a practice that is rooted in the soil on which borders are drawn and in which national identities are shaped. This article looks at the ways in which politics is swiftly becoming something that is inhaled, rather than something that occurs on the ground. I argue that we are witness to an arrival of a politics of the air one breathes. This move requires a thinking through the air or what I call an “air-thinking”. The article is set in the context of a growing occurrence of attacks on the breath in the aftermath of the strangulation of Eric Garner earlier last year. His now famous last words “I can’t breathe”, which he repeated 11 times, have unleashed a counter politics that reacts to the state’s tightening grip on what Sloterdijk calls the “negative air-conditioning” of breathing bodies.