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.
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.
Introduction Part
1. Voluntary Suffocation Ch 1: Escaping the Outside Ch
2: Synchronized Bliss Ch 3: Anesthesia and the End Part
2. Matrixial Breath
The Rhythms of Feel-Knowing Aerial Ch 4: Never was Heaven Ch 5: Fragile
Trans-Subjectivity Ch 6: Aerials of Subreality Part
3. Metreorologic
Speculations Towards Ettingerian Environmental Ethics Ch 7: From
Respiration to Trans-Spiration Ch 8: In-Spiration Ch 9: Metreorology
Christoph Solstreif-Pirker, Ph.D., is Professor of Aesthetic Education at the University College of Teacher Education Styria (Austria), a practicing psychotherapist, and an interdisciplinary artist. His artistic and academic work focuses on performative research, encounter-investigations, painting, drawing, sound, and text. After studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, and Graz University of Technology, he completed his Ph.D. in artistic research and contemporary art, followed by an M.A. in philosophy and psychoanalysis under the supervision of Bracha L. Ettinger. His dissertation, titled Being-Together-With the World-Without-Us, explored questions of space and subjectivity in the (Post-)Anthropocene, proposing feminine-performative modes of thinking and acting in response to contemporary planetary trauma. His work has been widely recognized and published in journals such as PCS: Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, Comparative Literature Studies, Ruukku: Studies in Artistic Research, and JAR: Journal for Artistic Research.
