This article urges a consideration of the atmospheric afterlives of fossil-fueled imperialism as not just accumulated gases and particles but also durable spatial dispositions governing how atmospheres are felt, arranged, and imagined. Focusing on the contemporary air pollution crisis in India, it analyzes how governmental responses to death-dealing airs today draw from colonial logics of bodily sequestration from outside threats, partaking in a climate of enclosure. Using archival, legal, and media sources, it excavates the imperial traces of three atmos-spheres, or spaces within which air is imagined, contained, or governed. The first is the Indian lung, an object of exoticized medical interest since the late nineteenth century. Tracing the reemergence of racialized claims of “deficient” Indian lung capacity, the article shows how a colonial epistemology of tropical otherness produces a strategic imperceptibility of today’s pollution-induced illness. The second is the colonial hill station, where colonial theories of medical topography shape present-day discourses of “lung-cleansing” hill vacations, casting atmospheric vulnerability as a natural condition of the tropical plains—the only solution to which is escape. The third is the privatized air offered through air pollution masks and purifiers, which draw from colonial practices of architecture and dress premised on a presumption that “the outside” is a zone of inherent biophysical risk. These three atmospheres together confirm that until the climate of enclosure is challenged, investments in sequestration will supersede structural efforts to produce air otherwise. The article also urges consideration of non-European atmospheres to understand how normative racial categories are reinforced through models of atmosphere.

本文敦促将化石燃料帝国主义的大气来世视为不仅是累积的气体和粒子，而且是控制大气如何感受、排列和想象的持久空间配置。关注印度当代的空气污染危机，它分析了当今政府如何从外部威胁中隔离身体的殖民逻辑中对死亡交易空气的反应，并参与到封闭的气氛中。使用档案、法律和媒体资源，它挖掘了三个大气层或空气被想象、包含或控制的空间的帝国痕迹。第一个是印度肺，自 19 世纪后期以来，它一直是具有异国情调的医学兴趣的对象。追踪重新出现的“缺乏”印度肺活量的种族化说法，这篇文章展示了热带差异性的殖民认识论如何对当今的污染引起的疾病产生战略性的不可察觉性。第二个是殖民山地站，殖民时期的医学地形理论塑造了当今“清肺”山地度假的话语，将大气脆弱性塑造为热带平原的自然条件——唯一的解决办法就是逃跑。第三个是通过空气污染面具和净化器提供的私有化空气，它借鉴了殖民时期的建筑和着装实践，前提是“外部”是一个固有的生物物理风险区域。这三种大气共同证实，在封闭气候受到挑战之前，对封存的投资将取代以其他方式产生空气的结构性努力。