Why the microbiome, why now? Historicising the post-genomic turn in social theory (with an attention to fermentation)

A range of commentators across the medical and environmental humanities are making fresh epistemic alliances with microbiology and the post-genomic and ecological sciences. Figures like Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing find a new ontology in emerging scientific theories of the microbiome for grounding political and ecological projects. In contrast to the reductionist, individualistic and violent visions of the natural world offered by 20th century evolutionary biology, the microbiome offers a palatable worldview premised on symbiosis, holism, and collaboration. This talk reflects on this conjoined ‘probiotic turn’ (Lorimer 2020) in social theory and the life sciences, noting the tensions it generates, and examines its implications for how we understand the role of science studies in the crisis-inflected atmospheres of Anthropocene knowledge production. This critical analysis is grounded in a close interrogation of the role being afforded fermentation in new materialist theories of food and health futures. It traces how the microbial relations associated with fermentation have been taken as affirmative grounds for a liberal, ecological, and more-than-human politics. It notes the potential of this alliance with science as well as its risk, mapping the wider diversity of political, economic, and ecological relations associated with fermentation.

Zoom link : https://epfl.zoom.us/j/66516277875