Matrixial Breath: Aesthetically Respiring into the Trauma of the Present

by Christoph Solstreif-Pirker

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032993508
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/26/2025
Series:	Routledge Critical Perspectives on Breath and Breathing
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Christoph Solstreif-Pirker, PhD, 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 PhD in artistic research and contemporary art, followed by an MA 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.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1PART I Voluntary Suffocation 13 1 Escaping the Outside 15 2 Synchronized Bliss 27 3 Anesthesia and the End 38 PART II Matrixial Breath – The Rhythms of Feel-Knowing Aerial 49 4 Never Was Heaven 51 5 Fagile Trans-Subjectivity 62 6 Aerials of Subreality 73 PART III Metreorologic Speculations – Toward Ettingerian Environmental Ethics 85 7 From Respiration to Trans-Spiration 87 8 In-Spiration 98 9 Metreorology 108 Conclusion 120 References 125 Index 133