An Aural Ethnography of Black Breath

Abstract This article discusses embodied practices of submerged breathing in waterscapes connected to the translatlantic slave trade. The central question this article addresses is: How does submerged Black breath sonically liberate new understandings of the past and present? Specifically, the article explores acts of submerged breathing carried out by Black scuba divers at submerged sites of enslavement as an expression of Black aurality that critically examines Black life. It argues that these fugitive practices of submerged existence cut across space and time. The article explores these embodied practices of breathwork in the author's dive experience and the experiences of two men, Kamau Sadiki and Jay Haigler, at a submerged site of enslavement, the Clotilda shipwreck in Mobile, Alabama. The author's attention to what is made possible when one attunes oneself to submerged breathing practices builds on the scholarship of Alexis Pauline Gumbs in her text Undrowned and Ashon Crawley's text Blackpentecostal Breath. Breathwork here demonstrates oceanic-rooted modes of memory making and commemoration that create breath-giving experiences that work to alchemize and heal transgenerational trauma.