JMH Online First, published on August 19, 2016 as 10.1136/medhum-2016-010908 Original article Med Humanities: first published as 10.1136/medhum-2016-010908 on 19 August 2016. Downloaded from Breath in the technoscientific imaginary Arthur Rose Correspondence to ABSTRACT temperature at which paper burns, significantly Dr Arthur Rose, Department of Breath has a realist function in most artistic media. It embellishes on the world of the novella, a world in English Studies and Centre for Medical Humanities, Caedmon serves to remind the reader, the viewer or the spectator which, to facilitate the censorship of books, Building, Durham University, of the exigencies of the body. In science fiction (SF) ‘firemen’ have been retooled to set fires rather than Leazes Road, Durham DH1 literature and films, breath is often a plot device for douse them. Amidst his elaborations, however, 1SZ, UK; human encounters with otherness, either with alien Bradbury omits one significant passage. Montag,
[email protected] peoples, who may not breathe oxygen, or environments, the hero of both The Fireman and Fahrenheit 451, Accepted 15 July 2016 where there may not be oxygen to breathe. But while convinces his wife, Mildred, to spend an afternoon there is a technoscientific quality to breath in SF, reading a pile of banned books he has secreted especially in its attention to physiological systems, away from various burnings. When she challenges concentrating on the technoscientific threatens to him to explain why he wants her to read the occlude other, more affective aspects raised by the books, at risk of personal ruin, he tells her to literature.