Afterword: Breath-Taking—Ethical Impulses for Breath Studies

This essay explores various interconnecting and cross-cutting threads that run through this volume. Alighting on ‘conspiration’ and other common themes that dominate the book, this afterword considers the contribution of the essays in their vast historical, cultural, and thematic milieux, and sees them as potential building blocks for a ‘breath studies’. And yet, by placing the book within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, we might worry whether conspiration may be at threat. It considers whether the strict government regulations which have sought to constrain the spread of the disease by suppressing social interactions and togetherness may be eroding our political and ethical capacities to share air.