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A review by bisexualbookshelf
On Breathing: Care in a Time of Catastrophe by Jamieson Webster
Did not finish book. Stopped at 20%.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book will be released by Catapult on March 11, 2025 in the US.
I stopped reading On Breathing at around 20% because it simply wasn’t aligning with what I was looking for. As someone who’s deeply engaged in liberatory politics and interested in the intersection between radical political thought and psychoanalysis, I was hoping for a more critical exploration of how environmental catastrophe and care intersect with broader social and political systems. Instead, I found the book leaning heavily into personal, introspective reflections—from the author’s own struggles with asthma and her experiences as a psychoanalyst during COVID, to extended meditations on her infant daughter’s breathing.
I stopped reading On Breathing at around 20% because it simply wasn’t aligning with what I was looking for. As someone who’s deeply engaged in liberatory politics and interested in the intersection between radical political thought and psychoanalysis, I was hoping for a more critical exploration of how environmental catastrophe and care intersect with broader social and political systems. Instead, I found the book leaning heavily into personal, introspective reflections—from the author’s own struggles with asthma and her experiences as a psychoanalyst during COVID, to extended meditations on her infant daughter’s breathing.
This focus felt both off-target and, frankly, borderline problematic for me. I’m uncomfortable with literature that exploits a child’s narrative without the possibility of consent, and I wasn’t drawn to the reliance on older psychoanalytic ideas, especially those rooted in Freudian and Winnicottian thought, which I find outdated and unconvincing. Overall, I was bored, sometimes confused, and increasingly convinced that my time would be better spent on texts that not only engage my interests but also contribute to my personal and political growth.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pandemic/Epidemic