Presentations

October 28, 2020

The Power of Shared Breath

Ana Laura Funes

Each action, each thought is accompanied by one’s own breathing.  It is one’s own breath that keeps us alive and it is one’s own breathing that leaves at the moment of death. Not until recently, it was uncommon to talk about breathing as a shared act, as a relational moment that is created with someone else. Yet, Luce Irigaray’s work calls for the cultivation of breathing to enable our ethical coexistence with the other. We also find this ethical dimension of breathing in an 8th century Indian work of Sāṃkhyan philosophy, the Yuktidīpikā, which relates one of the main functions of the vital breath to the act of sharing.  This presentation takes us through an exploration of a philosophy of breathing that can emerge inspired by the work of Luce Irigaray and a close reading of some Indian philosophical sources.

Ana Laura Funes M.
Eastern Connecticut State University

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About Ana Laura Funes

Ana Laura Funes Maderey is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Eastern Connecticut State University (ESCU) where she teaches Asian Philosophies, East-West Comparative topics in Philosophy, and Feminist Philosophies. Her research seeks to establish dialogues between phenomenology, feminism, and notions of bodily self-awareness in the Indian philosophical schools of Sāṃkhya, Yoga, and Vedānta.  She recently co-edited with Christopher Chapple the book Thinking with the Yoga Sūtra: Translation, Interpretation.

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