TY - JOUR T1 - Introduction<sup>1</sup> JF - Monatshefte SP - 1 LP - 13 DO - 10.3368/m.113.1.1 VL - 113 IS - 1 AU - Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge AU - Sabine Gross Y1 - 2021/04/01 UR - http://mon.uwpress.org/content/113/1/1.abstract N2 - We live within layers and realms of rhythm. Rhythm is anthropologically foundational, as an essential dimension of our biological existence and of our sensory, physical, and verbal interactions with our environment and each other. It is a physiological given, starting with our heartbeat and—from the moment of birth—our breathing. This does not mean, of course, that breathing and heartbeats are everywhere the same; as we write in the middle of a pandemic that invades through the breath, an environmental catastrophe that chokes the air, and perpetual systemic violence that forces breath from the bodies and stops the hearts of those deemed Other, it is all too clear that those rhythms are subject to external forces that reach into the physiological processes themselves. ER -