Respiratory negotiations: The elemental biopolitics of medical masks in times of atmospheric crisis

Nieuwenhuis, Marijn; Chen, Hung-Ying

Abstract

Existing at the intersection of health, politics and affect, medical masks evoke lines and flights of contentions and resistance in everyday lives. They are instruments of negotiation that mediate across bodies, breaths, airs, faces, and lived experiences. Carrying a history that goes back only a few hundred years, masks gained unprecedented traction during the COVID-19 outbreak. The outbreaks of social anxiety, frustration, and anger following mask mandates live beyond immediate concerns of efficacy. In moment of atmospheric crisis masks articulate and give expression to racial, class, environmental, political, and cultural divisions. In this article, we study the development of medical masks through an exploration of three episodes of atmospheric crisis, starting with their earliest recorded appearance at the time of the first edition of Hobbes’ Leviathan to the present day. Using an elemental mode of thinking, which foregrounds embodied entanglement with air, we explore the ways in which masks speak to biopolitical concerns. The episodes we draw from constitute and represent different mask regimes, both in their materiality and design, mirroring historical change as well as evolving biopolitical orders. We show that medical masks are not simply filtering devices against exposure from respiratory viruses; instead, they are biopolitical techniques through which regimes of inclusion and exclusion are enacted. By focusing on masks, we make a broader argument that work on biopolitics could gain insight from elemental thinking.

Citation

Nieuwenhuis, M., & Chen, H. (2024). Respiratory negotiations: The elemental biopolitics of medical masks in times of atmospheric crisis. Political Geography, 108, Article 103018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.103018

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 15, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Dec 7, 2023
• Publication Date: 2024-01
• Deposit Date: Dec 11, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 11, 2023
• Journal: Political Geography
• Print ISSN: 0962-6298
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 108
• Article Number: 103018
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.103018
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2022511