Take My Breath Away

Abstract

This article eschews the singularity of much disaster, crisis and catastrophe research to focus on the complex dynamics of convergent crises. It examines the prolonged crises of a summer of bushfire and COVID-19 which converged in Eurobodalla Shire on the south coast of New South Wales (NSW), Australia, in 2019–2020. We focus on air and breathing on the one hand and kinship and the social organisation of survival and recovery on the other. During Australia’s summer of bushfires, thick smoke rendered air, airways and breathing a challenge, leaving people open to reflection as well as to struggle. Bushfire smoke created ‘aware breathers’. It was aware breathers who were then to experience the invisible and separating threat of COVID-19. These convergent crises impacted the ‘mutuality of being’ of kinship (after Marshall Sahlins) and the social organisation of survival. Whereas the bushfires in Eurobodalla drew on grandparent-families in survival, the social distancing and lockdown of COVID-19 has cleaved these multi-household families asunder, at least for now. COVID-19 has also made plain how the mingling of breath is a new index of intimacy.