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