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Long abstract:

What is “the microbe” beyond the controlled environment of the lab, the pure culture and the sequenced genome? How does the microbial change, and what are the implications of the frictions that arise between different ways of knowing it, from biology to everyday practices?

In this presentation, I will consider the microbial within the context of urban gardening, drawing from ethnographic research in Athens, Greece. Placing it among a number of indeterminate and unruly forces that come into play in urban gardens, from weeds to cats to insects, I will argue that the relationship with the microbial in this context is paradigmatic of attitudes towards knowing, doing and dwelling in the city that involve a letting go of control.

In their modernist conception, cities and gardens mirror the lab as spaces where the master of the craft –the city planner, the gardener or the scientist – overlooks, surveys and controls. Yet cities and gardens (at least) are sites where this mastery is commonly resisted. In urban gardening, the microbial resists the determination that produces “the microbe”. It is always-already in assemblage, in multiples, inextricable from other bodies and mediums. Gardeners know it in such forms as compost, soil and plant disease. Engaged-with yet illusive, perceived yet unfixable, the microbial in urban gardening can be illustrative of a departure from knowledge-as-control and of a desire for a different way of being in the city.