On Timothy Choy’s paper, Atmospherics: On Substances and Subjects in Suspension
Maira Hayat
In this very interesting paper, I liked how Choy addresses the current life of the
atmosphere as, this was my sense at least, distinct from the atmosphere’s original
“embedding in militarized and national histories of war” (p. 3, 5). I would really like to
talk about how he conceptualizes (and justifies) this separation (between origins and the
now) (pp. 5, 6). How do the origins continue to matter (do they?) to the “futures for
atmospheric politics (that are not yet) fully determined”? (p. 6) Can the futures shed their
history?
Choy makes the argument that “thinking more about air, not taking it simply as solidity’s
opposite, might offer some means of thinking about relations and movements between
places, people, things, scales that obviate the usual traps of particularity and
universality”. In another class I’m taking (Climate and History) we’ve discussed the
politics of environmentalism, and one argument made by some in the ‘developing world’
goes something like this: measurements to show our air is polluted are used to try to stop
us from ‘developing’. 1 [This reminded me of corruption indices which many in the
Pakistani government see as mere shaming instruments – interesting to note just how
political ‘even’ numbers are].
Another example that might speak to the particularity-universality trap: a few years ago
an Oxygen bar opened its doors to the wealthy residents of Defense, an elite
neighborhood in Lahore (one of Pakistan’s biggest cities). Some (of the rich) loved it,
others thought it scandalous that the rich now needed their own, ‘pure’ air, that used by
everyone else not being good enough. So even the air we breathe is not ours – this is your
air, this is mine and mine’s cleaner. In fact, we don’t even need the Oxygen bar to think
about this: the air in the more affluent parts of the city is ‘better’ than the air in the less
affluent parts (in closer proximity to factories and railway tracks etc.). Should we talk
about airs (yours and mine) or just different “atmospheric experiences”? Choy writes,
“Thinking about the materiality of air and the densities of our many human
entanglements in airy matters also means attending to the solidifying and melting edges
between people, regions, and events.” This is a very interesting way of putting it and
makes me want to know more: when/where does air solidify edges and when/where does
it melt them? 2
The factory could shed further light: the products of these factories are (by and large) not
consumed by the residents/breathers (I mean it in the literal sense, not the economic
sense) of the area even though they are the breathers in the economic sense (having to
We’ve had this discussion most often in the contexts of China and India.
Following from Choy’s discussion of the thing power of air, (p. 7) it is interesting to see the
air as object and/or subject: in the Oxygen bar air as object is being purified. In a polluted,
economically backward neighborhood the air as subject has material force when it makes
people ill (people who do not have the resources to purify the air).
1
2
suffer from greater air pollution caused by the factories). Choy recognizes that the
“common-hood of breath is not one of equivalence, but partial connection and potential
resonance”, but still sees an increased capacity for “sharing suffering” – I am very
interested in probing this further and talking more about the specifics of the sharing (p.
14).