The Pneumatic Common: Learning in, with and from the air

Air is an immersive substance that envelopes us and binds us together, yet it has dominantly been taken for granted and left out of educational and other theorizations. This article develops a conceptualization of the pneumatic common in order to address this gap. The specific intervention staged is within recent educational literature on the common by Noah De Lissovoy, Tyson E. Lewis, and Alexander Means. This literature is surveyed and analyzed in relation to educational theory, curriculum, pedagogy, and policy. Claiming that the air is a central feature of and paradigm for the common, I then concentrate on making the air conditions of the educational common explicit. I do this through a theoretical, historical, and sociological reading of air conditioning. While this explicitation is itself educational, I return to the educational common at the end of the article to ask how and what we can learn in, with, and from the air.