Illustration courtesy Stacy Hardy
How has imperialism suppressed and exploited the “collective breathing” of colonized peoples?
How has imperialism suppressed and exploited the “collective breathing” of colonized peoples, and what forms and forums may enable such breathing to be liberatory? The international team on this experimental project will combine creative performance, ethnography, and theoretical inquiry to address these questions.
This collaborative project will construct breathing machines that reflect and articulate different domains of knowledge and practice, animated and knitted together by a sensibility that is both ethnographic and poetic. The research team defines breathing machines as forms and forums for the building and expression of collectivity through the act of conspiring together around shared sets of research questions and theoretical / praxiological / poetic / literary writing or artistic and musical creation. They will be built via diasporic and transnationally collaborative interactions between research, teaching, and performance, coordinated by the research team in collaboration with scholars, artists, activists, educators, and practitioners across multiple fields. These collaborations will primarily traverse and link between the United States and South Africa, but there will be elements of the work that connect to activities and practitioners in Colombia. Each breathing machine will be curated by a different group of people, embodying transnational and transdisciplinary collectives. They will be attached to teaching and syllabi, resulting in curricula produced both for university students and for various communities of practice outside the research university.
Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences in the College; Co-Director, Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory
University of Chicago
Kaushik Sunder Rajan works on the global political economy of the life sciences and biomedicine, with an empirical focus on India, South Africa, and the United States. He is the author of Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life (2006) and Pharmocracy: Value, Politics, and...
Lecturer in Creative Writing
Rhodes University
Stacy Hardy is a writer, researcher, and editor whose work explores the intersections of embodiment, the individual, and society. Her writing has appeared in various anthologies and journals including the New Orleans Review, New Contrasts, The Evergreen Review,...
Independent Composer and Musician
Neo Muyanga is a composer and installation artist. His work traverses new opera, improvisation and African idiomatic song. He lives and works out of Cape Town.
To learn more about his work and hear his music, please visit his website.
Associate Professor in English, Latin American and Latino Studies
University of Illinois Chicago
Daniel Borzutzky is a poet and translator from Spanish. He holds a joint appointment in the Latin American and Latino Studies Program at the University of Illinois Chicago. He has recently taught creative writing workshops as well as courses in U.S. Latinx literature and Latin American...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
At this performance lecture, Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow Stacy Hardy asked: Can breathing together be a way to share and create knowledge?
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
At this performance lecture, Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow Stacy Hardy asked: Can breathing together be a way to share and create knowledge?
